By Lukas S. Pigott
GRANÅSEN ARENA, Trondheim — After a championships where Team USA has not been able to make things click, things finally came together today, culminating in a silver medal for Jessie Diggins and Julie Kern in the women’s team sprint behind three-time defending champion Sweden.
Jessie Diggins has now taken seven medals across five World Championships in her career. Today’s silver gives her a full set of team sprint medals; she won gold in 2013 with Kikkan Randall and bronze in both 2017 and 2023 with Sadie Bjornsen and Kern respectively. Diggins also claimed an individual sprint medal in 2017, and medals in the 10km interval-start in both 2015 and 2023.
“This is a massive victory for the team” was Diggins’s opening line in a post-race interview, after she helped finally bring home the medal that has evaded the team so far this Championships.
After having struggled with her skis throughout the last week of racing, things were as they should be today. Diggins acknowledged that, “Everyone’s been working so hard and giving it everything they have all week. … Everything just came together today, which is really, really special.”
When asked about how it was skiing on a team with Kern, her longtime club teammate with SMS in Vermont, Diggins said, “I’m gonna cry.”
“I’ve been watching her for 10 years and seeing her skiing like such a boss out there was so cool,” she continued. “I was in tears at the finish watching her come in. … It was so so cool to see how much work she has put in and overcoming all these challenges and obstacles. It’s not easy but she makes it look easy and that’s amazing.”
“Little did I know my role model was going to become my teammate and close friend,” echoed Kern. “We believe in each other and trust each other. It’s really special to do it together. Today I just thought about all the hard sessions we’ve done together to lead to this moment.”
What does a silver medal mean for you?
“Oh, it’s everything” was Kern’s response. “I think we both love team events because you’re not just fighting for yourself, but for each other and for our whole team.”
Kern continued by thanking the wax staff for their efforts, saying, “Our staff have put so much hard work into the skis today. This was a really challenging day and we had amazing skis. It’s a team victory, truly.”
Speaking to the media after the race, USST Program Director Chris Grover agreed with Diggins, saying, “Everything came together. … It’s a big feeling of relief.”
Showcasing Trondheim to the rest of the world is going well, at least in regards to the weather. Today, snow had been switched out with slush for both the men’s and women’s team sprints.
As Johannes Klæbo says, “It isn’t always like this here,” with the last five days having been the five days in March with the most precipitation in Trondheim since 1899.
With that said, people are going to need a bit more convincing before saying yes to Jan Thomas Jennsen’s suggestion that “Trondheim should have the World Championships every year” after the wet experience that this championship has been.
With temperatures sitting right on 0 C for the qualifier in the morning, wax techs were still making decisions “within two minutes of start time,” Grover said after the race. While some athletes struggled with their skis, the qualifiers ultimately had little impact on the outcome of the race, with all the favorites making it safely through.
“Make it hard for everyone else” was the U.S. team’s plan for the final today. They were not alone. Sweden, who were the pre-race favorites, made an interesting tactical team selection, placing Jonna Sundling on the first leg instead of the second. Sundling’s task, perhaps imparted with an eye to ensuring that Norwegian anchor Kristine Stavås Skistad would not be in a position to use her fearsome kick, was simple: Go hard, and drop everyone.
And that is exactly what happened.
With weather now having warmed up and the skiers back on klister skis, the final started with Sundling unsurprisingly pushing the pace, with many countries struggling to keep up the pace early on.
As the laps progressed Sweden stayed in the lead, but the race was still open as they only ever had a handful of seconds on the main chasers, including the U.S., Switzerland, and Finland.
Both Diggins, on the scramble leg, and Kern, as the anchor, skied fantastic races, limiting the distance up to Sweden throughout the course and never letting Sweden get more than six seconds ahead, despite both Dahlqvist and Sundling pushing the pace constantly.
Going into the final lap, Diggins tagged Kern in second place, five seconds behind Sweden, and being trailed by Finland and Switzerland a few seconds behind. Despite the Norwegians being out of contention, the crowd roared as Kern was visibly closing in on Dahlqvist, giving spectators hopes of a Swedish loss if not a Norwegian win.
In the end, though, Sundling had given Dahlqvist enough of a head start for Dahlqvist to bring Sweden into their fourth out of four golds medals at this championships. It was also Sweden’s fourth consecutive time winning this event at world championships, dating back to Seefeld in 2019. Dahlqvist and Sundling have each been on three of those teams, with Stina Nilsson and Emma Ribom also making an appearance.
Speaking after today’s race Dahlqvist said, “It’s really nice that we have four and they don’t have any,” with “four” being gold medals this week and “they” being their Norwegian rivals.
Nadine Fähndrich skied a phenomenal final leg, catching and passing an exhausted Jasmi Joensuu from Finland, who needed medical attention after the race, to bring Switzerland into a bronze medal.
Speaking to the media after the race, Fähndrich said she decided to, “Give everything I have and leave my heart out on the track.” She added, “When I saw the second uphill, and that I was coming closer and closer, I was like, Now, now we will make it.”
The team sprint is a unique event both in the rarity of its appearances on the World Cup calendar within the race season, but also in terms of the type of athlete that performs well in it.
Sprinting capabilities are important, but with the equivalent of three sprint heats with less than a three-minute break in between, skiers who have good distance capabilities often succeed better than pure sprinters.
Basically, Sundling and Klæbo are the optimal team sprint skiers; they are the best sprinters in the world, but also have fantastic distance skiing capabilities. It’s therefore no surprise that they both did quite well today, with Klæbo being “quite happy with how things have gone so far.”
Norway took a gamble with their team selection in the women’s race, hoping for a more tactical race that would end in a sprint where Kristine Stavås Skistad would be strong. The Swedish women however had no intentions of anything such, putting the pressure on from the start. The result was a surprising 7th place for the home nation, almost a minute behind Sweden.
“It’s embarrassing to be so horrible” was what Lotta Udnes Weng and Skistad told the Norwegian media after the race. “We underperformed, both of us, and we know we can do better” was Weng’s analysis.
“Could we have taken out a different team? Of course we could have. We have many strong skiers” said Norwegian women’s coach Sjur Ole Svarstad. “We took out the team that we thought could take a medal here today.”
The Canadian women finished the day in tenth. “It was really fun, great day, and I think we worked well together” was Alison Mackie’s assessment of their 10th-place finish.
How were you going to attack this race?
“We decided to put me on the first leg because I have a bit more experience in mass starts, and we though Alison was stronger on the finish,” was Liliane Gagnon’s answer. She continued, “We went into it, giving it our all, and just trying to hold on for dear life and ski the best we could, and yeah, I think that’s what we did, and it will be better and better.”
When asked about their thoughts on the American women medalling today, they agreed that “They deserve it” and “It’s fun to see a bit of diversity on the podium.”
Coming into today, it had been a difficult championship for Diggins. Despite the skis getting most of the blame for this, some questions had been raised concerning Diggins’s form.
When asked about this, Grover said, “I think we’ve all seen that Jessie really has some of the most amazing talent and ability to maintain the highest level of fitness for the longest period of time.”
He continued by saying, “She does a really amazing job of managing her training load, managing her race fitness, and just being ready when the time comes. … It’s quite unusual actually in the athletic world to see somebody who actually can ski fast at the beginning of the season, ski fast in the middle, and ski fast at the end of the season.”
Everything coming together seemed to be the theme of the day for the American team. When Grover talks about what he refers to as “Julia’s journey” he says, “fitness is coming together, technique is coming together. She’s been on this upward trajectory through the whole like middle half of the season. You’ve seen it in her distance results. You start to see it in her sprint results here.”
When Grover is asked about the rest of the championships, his intention is clear: “Our goals are to have a few more medals.”
The most medals that the U.S. has brought back from a championships is three, from Lahti in 2017. Diggins and Randall went two–three in the sprint, and Diggins and Bjornsen were third in the team sprint. Grover said that that mark is “going to be a bit of a stretch for us now, given the races that are left,” but “we’ll come out and keep fighting every day and hopefully have some more great results.”
Hear even more from Grover here:
While the precipitation in Trondheim may ease up tomorrow, the wind is supposed to pick up to over 30 meters per second. In response the organizing committee has decided to close the venue for the entire morning, while moving the men’s relay from 12:30 to 14:00 local time, when the wind is predicted to abate somewhat.
Norway are the overwhelming favorites to make it five out of five tomorrow, with a team of Erik Valnes, Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget, Harald Østberg Amundsen, and Klæbo. They will be challenged by among others, France, Sweden, and Team USA, consisting of JC Schoonmaker, Zak Ketterson, Kevin Bolger, and Ben Ogden, in that order.
The women’s relay goes off on Friday. 4th–4th–4th–5th–4th–5th is the American women’s track record in the World Championships relay over the last 12 years. Norway and Sweden are the big favorites to take home the women’s relay gold, one of the most prestigious events for the Scandinavians, but if the USA can bring the team together like they did today, they will be in the running to break their streak of 4th and 5th places.
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.
