By Devin L. Ward, Ph.D.
Today’s Cogne World Cup women’s classic sprint followed about the same route as yesterday’s team sprint, but was missing a little sunshine. The finishing stretch felt long and led to some exciting doublepole battles, in spite of a start list missing some of the top sprinters. We’ve seen a lot of sprint finals dominated by the Swedish women in recent years and that was not the case today.
Maja Dahlqvist was the only Swedish woman to race all three heats today. Making up for her missing teammates, she easily controlled her quarterfinal and semifinal with her drama-free doublepoling prowess.
Her Swedish compatriot Johanna Hagström made up in this department. Hagström’s fifth heat was very fast (the winner was about 4.6 seconds faster than the fourth heat), and initially appeared to produce both lucky losers: Hagström and Ane Appelkvist Stenseth of Norway.
However, we (TV viewers and commentators) found out after the men’s heats that the race jury had awarded Hagström a yellow card for neglecting to stride in a technique zone. The violation was her second written reprimand in the same season, leading to her disqualification. This opened up the second lucky loser spot for Jessie Diggins, who had been the only American to qualify for the heats today. While Diggins therefore did advance to the semifinals, it is unclear precisely when she learned of the jury’s decision and knew that she would have more racing on the day.
In a dramatic Instagram update on January 18, Diggins shared that an MRI after the Tour de Ski revealed that she has a partial rupture of the fascia where it attaches to her heel bone. She said at the time that she wasn’t sure when her next classic race with striding would occur, but that hopefully it would be in time for World Championships in Trondheim.
Diggins doublepoled the sprint qual in Les Rousses that same day, then sat out the 20km classic on January 19. She did not race in either the Engadin mixed relay or the Cogne classic team sprint, though she has not contested such races over the last few years even when healthy. When she returned today, she had ultimately missed only one scoring classic race, the Les Rousses 20km on January 19.
While Diggins did not make the final today, we did see her striding on her way to her doubly-lucky loser spot in the semifinal. Diggins was upbeat about the experience, providing the following comments to press about her race today:
“Today felt like an amazing little personal miracle because with the normal timeline of six to eight weeks for healing, there’s no way I should have been able to do that today. And I feel so lucky and so grateful for our incredible medical team that’s been helping me out and honestly just very grateful for my strong resilient body that I’ve been taking really good care of. I was just so excited to be able to go race today and have my foot feel okay.
“Granted, I was being incredibly careful. I still did probably more spin biking than anyone on the World Cup has ever seen. And I also was trying very hard to do as little striding on my left foot as possible. So I was trying to be incredibly conservative, playing it really safe, but I’m just really, really happy about today, really grateful. Time will tell, hopefully things still feel good tomorrow, but right now, I’m so happy with the race and … just feeling happy.”
Jasmi Joensuu, backing up a string of good performances this year that includes a win in the team sprint yesterday with Kerttu Niskanen, won her quarterfinal but finished last in her semifinal. It was unclear from the Eurosport feed what exactly happened in her semifinal when she fell back from the other racers, but we saw Diggins pass Joensuu at speed during Diggins’s last-ditch attempt to catch the leading quartet with less than one minute left to race. Joensuu ended up +10.07 seconds behind, but back in the red bib, her work for the weekend finished.
The final was as fast as the fifth heat, with the podium pulling away in the last 30 seconds, crossing the line in the same order as they broke away. This is Dahlqvist’s first individual win after her streak of four consecutive sprint final wins in 2021. This may surprise some given how often the Swedish women are on the podium, but speaks to the depth of the Swedish team. Nadine Fähndrich finished second (+0.94) and Laura Gimmler finished third (+1.24), claiming her first career individual podium.
Four other American women raced the qualifying round. Kate Oldham (Montana State) finished 39th in qualifying, Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie, but FIS needs to update her database entry because she’s still listed as SMS in official results) finished 43rd, Erin Bianco (BSF Pro Team) finished 45th, and Emma Albrecht (BSF Pro Team) finished 49th.
Given that Sonnesyn has been racing consistently for the entire season, I asked her how she was managing her energy levels. She responded, “It’s definitely a challenge to manage energy and recovery during such a busy period of racing. Staying healthy on the road has been tricky for me the last few weeks and unfortunately came down with a stomach bug this week that took me out for many days. That being said, the fact that I made it to the start line this weekend was a huge accomplishment given the last week and the mental approach I’ve had given the circumstances is something I’m proud of. I’m hoping for the chance to get my feet back under me before more racing continues.”
When I asked Bianco how she felt about her qualifying round, she said, “I felt proud of it in the sense that I left everything out there. This course taught me that I need to work on my double pole. The fans were super fun though and I had a great time. The body felt good, so excited to bring that into Falun where there are some more hills.”
The sprint today was Albrecht’s first World Cup race in Europe after starting all four races at the 2024 Canmore World Cup. She told Nordic Insights, “My first World Cup experience outside North America has been an incredible opportunity. Competing at this level has only reinforced my motivation to keep training and improving. Racing alongside athletes I’ve looked up to for years is both inspiring and motivating. The quick turnaround with the time zone change was a challenge — I had just two days to adjust before my first race — but I’m proud of the work I put in to be here.
“The team sprint has been the highlight so far; we made the final, and I finished in the top 30 in the qualifier individually. It’s also been valuable to race on European sprint courses, which, at least in Cogne, feel quite different from those in the U.S. The support from my teammates has been incredible, and being in Europe for these races is a meaningful step in my career.”
Four American women start tomorrow’s 10-kilometer interval-start skate in Cogne at 13:00 CET (7 a.m. EST, 3 a.m. in Anchorage): Kate Oldham, Kendall Kramer, Jessie Diggins, and Julia Kern
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.
