Diggins Third in 10km Skate to Close Out Loppet Cup as Sundling Wins Again

By Gavin Kentch

In April 2023, in connection with a pre-season press conference for the Loppet Cup, I asked Jessie Diggins to complete the sentence, “The Minneapolis World Cup stop will be a success if ____.”

Her answer, in part was: “Tons of people come. And the tickets are free thanks to Share Winter, and they have this opportunity to be *so* inspired. Because I remember what it felt like for me, the first time I was at a World Cup. I remember just thinking, like, Oh my god, this energy, like, I want to go out and hammer some intervals. I just remember feeling just lit up by the experience of it.” (You can read, and listen to, her whole answer here if you would like.)

Judged against this standard, the Loppet Cup was a roaring success. The crowds were huge. Their courseside chants could be heard through the TV broadcast, reverberating around the venue. This was a form of support that was perhaps not unappreciated when a certain hometown hero found herself faltering over the close of the race.

“It was getting slushy and it was getting a little slower every lap,” Diggins told FIS after the race. “So I knew that I had to keep working everything. There was almost no rest out there, which is why I like this course. My strategy was to go as hard as I can the whole time and try to finish with about 2km left and hope the crowd would carry me back to the finish line — and they did.”

The crowd chanted Jess-ie!, Jess-ie!, Jess-ie! for all they were Wirth (pun intended), willing Diggins forward, as she teetered on the edge between the final spot on the podium and a wooden medal. (A fourth-place finish is not bad, actually, and I likely would have led this article with the same quote even if she had been fourth. But I don’t think it’s an unseemly focus on results to suggest that Diggins would have rather been on the podium today than off of it. Athletes tend to enjoy being on the podium rather than narrowly missing it.)

It was close. At 6.4 kilometers into the technically 9.9km race, Diggins was in third, 3.6 seconds ahead of Victoria Carl in fourth and 3.9 seconds up on Linn Svahn in fifth as she closed out the second of two, 3.3-kilometer laps. At the 6.6km mark, the cushion to fourth was up to 5.0 seconds.

But at 8.5km it was down to 3.0 seconds. Svahn had started four minutes ahead of Diggins, and Carl 12 minutes ahead of her, so both those athletes were already done. They could not ski any faster or slower; Diggins could only ski faster.

It was, again, close, but she pulled it off. At 9.1km, the gap was down a tick, to 2.9 seconds. At 9.7km, it was down again, to 2.7 seconds. The trend lines were going in the wrong direction, but the finish was right there. “No one closes out a course like Jessie Diggins,” is the (probably quite accurate) received wisdom these days, and Diggins was unlikely to lose 2.7 seconds over 200 meters, not when a massive wall of sound was urging her forward as if every ounce of the visibility of high-level American skiing rested on her powerful shoulders.

Diggins came down the final working downhill (a strength) and willed herself toward the finish line with her trademark ragged late-race form. She had, of course, put a half-second into Svahn over the final 200 meters of the course to ensure herself of the last spot on the podium, which she reached by 3.2 seconds over the Swedish sprint star.

Jonna Sundling, of Sweden, won the race, in 22:38.9, her second victory here in as many days. Her teammate Frida Karlsson was second, 15.4 seconds back. Diggins was 31.8 seconds back for third, with Svahn 35.0 seconds back in fourth. Carl faded slightly over her final lap, holding onto fifth and finishing 43.6 seconds back. The top end of the field was far more spread out here than in the men’s race that had started the day on firmer conditions, where razor-thin margins prevailed.

After the race, Svahn was left ruing a second-lap fall on an icy section of the course, suspecting that that cost her team a Swedish podium sweep on the day.

Sunday marked the exceedingly rare World Cup race day in which the men raced first and the women second; normally it is the men who get the prime, later television spot. I am assuming that organizers were concerned that some of the massive crowd would go home once Diggins passed through; she was, to put it mildly, the main draw today.

“That was so hard but that’s my style of racing,” Diggins told FIS. “I wanted to leave it all out there. My only goal was to enjoy it, so I’m really proud of what I did I out there.”

Sophia Laukli, in 15th, was the fastest American woman in the field today, non–Jessie Diggins edition. She was joined in the top 30 by Julia Kern in 19th, Rosie Brennan in 22nd, and Haley Brewster in 25th. They were followed by Sydney Palmer-Leger in 32nd, Kendall Kramer in 36th, Novie McCabe in 37th, Margie Freed in 41st, Sammy Smith in 42nd, Alex Lawson in 50th, and Alayna Sonnesyn in 51st.

World Cup racing takes a full two weeks off before resuming in Lahti on March 2. There are suddenly just seven scored races remaining in the 2023/2024 World Cup season, for which Diggins still leads the overall standings, by 257 points over Svahn. This is up from a lead of 252 points yesterday following Diggins pipping Svahn by one place today, not to obsess or anything.

Results

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