By Devin L. Ward, Ph.D.
The Davos World Cup women’s skate sprint, held Saturday afternoon and evening local time, brought some excellent racing for the American women. Four qualified into the heats, with Jessie Diggins finishing 6th on the day, Rosie Brennan 18th, Alayna Sonnesyn 22nd, and Julia Kern 28th. The 22nd was a career-best finish for Sonnesyn, long allied with SMS but now in her first year training with Team Birkie in her native Midwest.
When asked how she is managing the load of two back-to-back sprint evenings, Brennan responded, “It’s particularly taxing, but that’s why we train all summer, is to be able to race back-to-back. I think I try to be a durable athlete.”
With some Swedes opting not to race this weekend and heading to altitude prior to the Tour de Ski, plus much of the Swedish team dealing with ongoing illness and injury issues, only Jonna Sundling made the final for the circuit’s strongest sprint nation on the women’s side.
After winning yesterday’s team sprint with Sundling, Emma Ribom fell out of the starting gates in her heat and did not advance. This led to a Norwegian-dominated final, but they couldn’t touch Sundling, who could be seen looking back at the competition through her legs on the final downhill (slide two below).
In spite of a start list featuring fewer Swedes than normal, Diggins said that it, “didn’t really change [her] approach to choosing a heat. I just went with a strategy that I felt like was going to help me get through into the finals.” Diggins promptly dismantled her quarterfinal heat in a Klæbo-esque manner, though at the finish line she then expressed surprise at the gap she had created, in lieu of Klæbo’s unshakeable aplomb.
Diggins is shown here finishing first in quarterfinal five, by a healthy 1.96 seconds, and having feelings about it.
Diggins again dominated her semifinal, finishing first there as well. But she skied more conservatively in the final, ultimately finishing sixth overall.
Sonnesyn’s racing today was a standout result. We know that Davos is a strong course for the 28-year-old, given her 24th-place finish here in 2022, but her 22nd today, following a strong 17th in qualifying, marks her best individual World Cup result to date.
When asked about this race, Sonnesyn wrote to Nordic Insights, “This result meant a lot to me today! All of the stars aligned for me and I’m super grateful for that. I’ve been working my butt off for 5 years for a result like this and I’ve had glimpses of it along the way but nothing as tangible as this.”
She continued, “If I had to pick one thing that did the trick for me today, it would be my mental approach. Last season was tough for me and I wasn’t in a great place mentally. I was stuck in a place where I didn’t believe in myself and it wasn’t a switch I could just flip, no matter how hard I tried mid-season. You can’t just turn that on and off. So I had to do a lot of self-reflecting and mental work over the past 10–12 months to re-discover that self-belief. It took me until about October of this year to actually feel it. I hope to use it to carry me forward.”
In her comments via USSS Diggins shouted out her former teammate, saying, “I was super excited, especially for Alayna because I feel like it’s just so cool when somebody punches their way through into the heats, and the same can be said for Jack Young” (in the men’s race).
For the remaining American women, Lauren Jortberg finished the qualifier in 38th, Erin Bianco in 47th, Haley Brewster in 50th, and Renae Anderson in 54th.
“Sad to miss the heats by a second but major perspective from my last two period 1 ass whopping,” Jortberg wrote on Strava. “The season has just begun.”
Jortberg also addressed her strategy for the first altitude races of the season. “Honestly the only thing you would try to do is come early,” the athlete who grew up at altitude in Colorado wrote to Nordic Insights, “but you can’t so just keep training chill and recovery at the forefront!”
And here is Renae Anderson with some real talk on Strava, plus also a Swiss cow:
Sunday brings a 20km interval-start classic race at 14:00CET (7:00EST and 4:00 Alaska Time) with five American women scheduled to start: Sydney Palmer-Leger, Rosie Brennan, Alayna Sonnysen, Jessie Diggins, and Haley Brewster.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned aprofit in years one and two of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year three of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, last season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
