By Maximo Steverlynck
The Tour de Ski continued into the new year Monday morning with a 20km freestyle pursuit following yesterday’s 10km classic. Jessie Diggins skied off the front all day on the Toblach trails to charge to her 17th career World Cup victory with 20km of solo skiing. She extended her lead in the Tour de Ski to almost a minute up on second place in the process. On the men’s side, Gus Schumacher led the Americans with a 10th-place finish, skiing smart in the first chase group behind the leaders.
Podiums today consisted of Jessie Diggins (USA) in first, Victoria Carl (GER) in second, and Linn Svahn (SWE) in third for the women, and Harald Østberg Amundsen (NOR) in first, Erik Valnes (NOR) in second, and Jan Thomas Jenssen (NOR) in third for the men. These are not the time-of-day podiums, because time-of-day podium isn’t really a thing.
In neither race was there ever much question who would win. Both Diggins and Amundsen delivered spectacular performances, skiing much of their races solo. Diggins, for her part, started in first and didn’t leave anything up to chance, extending her lead immediately and putting an additional thirty seconds into her pursuers by the halfway point of the race.
Speaking after the race, Diggins commented, “I put it all out there, went hard, and saw how long I could hold it.” Victoria Carl and Linn Svahn held their places, but stagnated versus the field and Diggins, with the pace being pushed both in front of them and behind them.
Rosie Brennan had a rough day by her standards, ultimately finishing 15th after starting the race in bib no. 6. “I’m proud I kept fighting today even if I lost way more time than I had hoped,” Brennan said in comments shared from USSS. “I really struggled with the conditions today and just not feeling great out there.”
In the men’s race, Amundsen skied with Valnes before going solo around 15km and not looking back. Behind them, a chase group led by William Poromaa of Sweden, but containing Gus Schumacher within it, pushed the pace hard, especially going into the last quarter of the race.
Jenssen played his cards perfectly, not being seen much on the front until the very end of the race, where he beat Poromaa on the line for the last podium spot by 0.3 seconds after 20+ kilometers of racing.
Schumacher told Nordic Insights, in written comments after the race, that group dynamics today were quite standard: “Some working together in the beginning, but largely pushed by the more distance oriented guys like Hugo [Lapalus] and Friedrich [Moch]. I think everyone up front was getting antsy in the last couple laps so that was probably just a general group vibe to go faster. No one was talking obviously, but there was probably a good amount of pressure felt by those guys with less sprint pace to take the sting out of dudes like Pellegrino and Jensen.”
Speaking about his effort management on the multi-lap course, Scott Patterson (28th on the day) said that “the hardest [part of the course] for me is the midway climb that just forces extended V2 for a while.”
Patterson could be seen on the broadcast in the finish pen talking with Jules Lapierre shortly after the race, making hand gestures that evoked climbs on a race course.
When asked about this exchange, Patterson wrote, “Jules Lapierre is a friend and also a strong skater. The two of us did a lot of work for our group today so we were just discussing that. Energy management was important. The new snow this morning made for some really inconsistent conditions with variable skis. Andrew Young had the best in my group so it was always advantageous to sit behind him on the downs. But Jules and I were the ones to push the ups.
“Overall it was a solid day for me and a nice opportunity to move up in the overall before I have to sprint again.”
Following Stage 3, Amundsen leads the men in the overall Tour standings and takes the yellow bib from his countryman Valnes going into Davos, where racing resumes on Wednesday with a skate sprint, the final race in this year’s Tour. Valnes moves into second place in the overall with a 32-second deficit. Rounding out the virtual men’s podium is Jenssen, 1:04 back, making it a day for the Norwegian men’s squad.
Schumacher now takes up the mantle for the American men in the overall, currently placing 10th (+1:09). Patterson in 28th (+2:42) and Ogden in 33rd (+3:44) follow.
Diggins maintains her top step of the virtual podium but opens the gap, with Carl remaining in second, now 46.5 seconds behind. Svahn rounds out the women’s virtual podium, at 48.2 seconds behind. Brennan in 15th (+2:04) is the next highest-placing American woman, with Sophia Laukli in 21st (+3:13).
Results: women stage 3 | men stage 3 | women TdS overall | men TdS overall
