By Gavin Kentch
Three mainstays of the American women’s team — Jessie Diggins, Rosie Brennan, and Sophia Laukli — are dealing with various degrees of injury or issue as we approach the midway point of the 2024/2025 World Cup season. Here is an update on all three women in advance of racing returning to Les Rousses this Friday.
Jessie Diggins
Diggins publicly battled plantar fasciitis over the final days of this year’s Tour de Ski, at one point posting to Instagram about “a lot of ice, one boot, [and] a full foot exercise routine before getting out of bed each day.” Since the Tour ended she has been doing some degree of skiing; a Friday Instagram post showed her and husband Wade Poplawski on skis in Livigno and referred to “A very full heart, and a slowly healing foot ❤️🩹.”
In a weekend email statement to Nordic Insights, Diggins wrote, “I’m really grateful for all the incredible help I’m receiving, as well as all the love and well wishes from people! I’m healing slowly but surely and taking the race plans one day at a time.”
Rosie Brennan
Brennan has had an up-and-down time of things this year. While she has competed in nearly every World Cup race so far this season, she was DNS for the Lillehammer skiathlon in December while battling injury. She raced the first four stages of this year’s Tour before withdrawing.
In a statement on the day of the skiathlon, December 8, Brennan told Nordic Insights, “I’m dealing with an unknown injury that significantly impacted my race on Saturday. It’s stressful … at the moment and right now, I don’t have any other information to share. I will be working with our medical staff to figure out a plan moving forward.”
In a statement yesterday, Brennan shared this update: “I’m doing all I can to return to racing but have to be sure my health is in a place to do so.”
Rosie Brennan… has not looked like herself for much of this season. I am not going to speculate as to why; I am unqualified to do so, and would try to grant her some level of privacy even if I weren’t (while also doing some reporting on her wellbeing, because Brennan is a professional athlete and her health is directly relevant to her ability to do her job).
That said, looking simply at race results, through Period 1 and Period 2 of last season Brennan had ten individual top-10 results, including four podiums, and was ranked third in the overall and second in the distance standings as of the close of the Tour de Ski. This season, Brennan has had two individual top-10 results, and is currently ranked 28th in the overall standings (20th in distance).
Objectively speaking, Brennan is therefore clearly not skiing as well this year as last year. Subjectively speaking, and I am going to editorialize here for part of one sentence sorry, my heart goes out to her and I hope that she can get things sorted out soon.
Sophia Laukli
In a candid Instagram caption, Laukli described her experience in this year’s Tour de Ski as characterized by “a little bruised ass, bruised ego, bruised mindset action to make a long week even longer.”
In a weekend email, Laukli expanded upon the “bruised ass” portion of the above-quoted tricolon:
“Simply put I bruised my ass in a fall during the tour, at least hoping that’s all it is. I got checked out by our PT and everything should be ok, just a pretty bruised/beat up/sore butt. But I’ve been out for a week and had my first day back training on Saturday. It’s definitely not great but at least a bit more of a manageable pain now on skis. Moving forward I’m just taking it day by day and making sure it at least doesn’t get any worse. I’m hoping to still race in Les Rousses and that it will get better in time by next weekend, so that’s the plan for now.
“What actually happened was I crashed pretty bad during the skiathlon in Val di Fiemme. It was just a typical mass start chaos situation out of the start. I got skied over on the first descent and went down hard on the snow/ice.
“I definitely contemplated dropping because things did not feel right as I kept skiing, but it was hard to make that call when it was the second to last stage in the tour and the hill climb the next day. So the skiathlon was a long painful race, but the hill climb turned out to feel even worse.
“I nearly didn’t start the final climb because it was almost impossible to ski. I actually decided I wasn’t going to race after how it felt in my warm up, but about 20 minutes before the start I decided I would give it a go since I knew I’d regret not trying. And it’s pretty easy to convince yourself that adrenaline and that type of thing can mask any bad feelings, which now I learned is not always gonna be the case. Pretty much the second it started I knew it was not gonna be my day and that it would be a really tough race to finish, but I had committed at that point so it just became the ultimate suffer fest that I just had to get though.
“So long story short, I hit my ass hard, tried to keep racing, went worse than I thought, and now I’m just trying to get back into it.”
World Cup racing resumes in Les Rousses on Friday. Start lists will be posted 24 hours in advance of the first race, and will be drawn from this pool.
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 a profit 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.
