By Gavin Kentch
If you’re just joining us you may not have previously heard much about this, but you should know that Jessie Diggins just won her second consecutive crystal globe, honoring the skier who collected the most points across the entire World Cup season. It is the third overall globe of Diggins’s career; among women, only Yelena Välbe, Marit Bjørgen, Bente Skari, and Justyna Kowalczyk (now Kowalczyk-Tekieli) have more.
You should also know that the 2026 Winter Olympics will be next season. Finally, you should know that the 2025 World Championships were held in Trondheim earlier this month, and that the American team did not have a particularly great time of things there results- or tech-wise. With the exception of team sprint day, when Diggins and SMS teammate Julia Kern won silver and Gus Schumacher and JC Schoonmaker were sixth for the men, all of them on clearly very good skis, the American skis for most athletes on most days were… not the best.
How much not the best? Quantifying that is vastly beyond my pay grade, so let’s just look at some objective results: Coming into world champs, Diggins’s average finish position this World Cup season was 3.7 in distance races, and 10.1 in sprint races (the data set for this latter figure excludes her 40th place in Les Rousses when she doublepoled the sprint qual as a workout). In Trondheim, Diggins finished 13th and 22nd in two distance races, an average finish position of 17.5, and 23rd in the sprint. How much of that is due to just the tech side of things, as opposed to peaking or any of the myriad other things that bear on performance in this sport, is another thing that I am incapable of quantifying. But, mathematically speaking, that is certainly a discrepancy.
(If you’d like to hear about the ski service side of things from someone infinitely more qualified to speak to this: Here’s Zach Caldwell on a recent Seder-Skier podcast on just this topic (starts around the 67-minute mark for world champs tech side specifically).)
Diggins spoke to this in a recent press conference–type interaction. On Friday, media members were invited to submit questions for Diggins about this season and next. On Saturday, she provided answers in a video that was sent back out via USSS media relations.
The first question that Diggins took up here involved a rose, a bud, and a thorn from the previous season. Diggins said on this point, in part, “The thorn was the skis at World Championships. We have really struggled in slushy conditions. A lot of this is due to funding and opportunities for our wax techs to be able to develop grinds for slushy conditions. We’re a little bit behind there. That is not their fault; that is not a lack of hard work; it’s not a lack of anything except time and opportunity. And unfortunately we were not able to adapt during the championships.”
The question submitted by the Nordic Insights team was, “What did you learn from this season that you plan to take into next season, maybe particularly with regard to peaking for a championship. Is there anything you plan to change for the Olympics?” I will let you decide for yourself whether USSS press officer Leann Bentley passed this question on to Diggins.
Anyway. Here is complete audio of what was sent out to media yesterday. The audio doesn’t start until roughly 22 seconds into this file, sorry, because I recorded this from the video and don’t really know what I’m doing. Go listen to Ryan Sederquist’s podcast if you want someone who knows what he’s doing when it comes to audio production.
Here are time stamps for the questions asked:
0:42: “You started us off with ‘rose, bud, thorn’ before the season. How would you answer that now looking at the entire season?”
3:24: “Last season was your strongest season statistically in your career, but this season you accomplished something you’ve always wanted to do: win the overall Crystal Globe healthy. Can you explain that in more detail?”
6:24: “What makes this Crystal Globe different than all the other Crystal Globes?” [Insert your own Ma Nishtana joke here.]
6:50: “The World Cup overall championship is a long competition that rewards those who can stay fit, competitive, and healthy through an entire season. Entering next season, an Olympic year, will the defense of this World Cup title continue to be a priority for you or might you pick and choose more selectively which events will prepare you best for the Olympic success?”
8:34: “You have done many things for the first time: winning the first Olympic gold medal, the first individual world champs medal [sic; see Bill Koch, Kikkan Randall], becoming the winningest American cross-country skier, and for the third time in your career, once again, you took home the crystal globe, which you’re the only non-European to ever do that. [sic: Diggins is the only non-European woman to accomplish this; Bill Koch won in 1981/1982. Vladimir Smirnov, of, eventually, Kazakhstan, may well identify as Asian rather than as European. And the Russian question is somewhat complicated, but multiple women representing Russia/USSR/CIS have also won the globe, fwiw.] What does it mean to you to do something for the first time? And does it feel significant when you achieve it?”
10:59: “You’ve always been known for your positivity and ability to lift up those around you. How do you balance that with the pressure of being at the top?”
12:25: “You’ve said before that success is more than just results. Now after winning your third overall globe, what does success mean to you? Has that definition evolved over your career?”
14:49: “You’ve become a role model to so many young skiers. What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to the next generation?”
16:12: “What keeps you coming back to this sport? What keeps you wanting to be on that start line?”
17:57: “You’re the number one skier in the world for the second year in a row. What would you tell young Jessie Diggins if you could speak to her now?”
Diggins did her last race of the season earlier today, finishing 9th in the 50km classic in Lahti. Judging from the above, she is going to be on a plane back to Boston as soon as realistically possible. Safe travels to all.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
