By Gavin Kentch
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The U.S. Ski Team really wants you to know that Jessie Diggins is retiring at the end of this race season. There was the lead story on usskiandsnowboard.org, which remains the headline as of midday Thursday. There was the annual preseason press conference, held earlier today, at which retirement was a central theme. On social media, meanwhile, by the end of Wednesday there were five (!) distinct posts about Diggins retiring on the team Instagram account, @usskiteam.
These posts were headlined, variously, “One Final Season ✨,” “Thank you, Jessie. ✨,” “We’re honored to stand with @jessiediggins as she reaches her final finish line and skis into her next chapter. ✨” (from a sponsor), “@jessiediggins, through the eyes of others. Her impact went far beyond ski racing. 🤝,” and “One final go around for three-time Olympic medalist, Jessie Diggins. 👏.” That is, in sum, three sparkles emojis, one handshake emoji, and one clapping hands emoji, if you are keeping score at home.
You may also have noticed the use of the past tense in the penultimate post there. “But, like, Jessie is still alive,” I mused to myself when I first saw that yesterday. “What if her impact reaches yet further this year?”
I was not alone in getting strong funerary vibes from all this. “It’s kind of like attending your own funeral,” Diggins said in today’s press conference of the outpouring of laudatory media coverage. “But like in a good way, because all of a sudden you see all the really nice things that people are saying about you.”
An email from USSS yesterday morning also contained a link to a folder with images and video of Diggins to use in stories. I may or may not post the video here eventually (it is six minutes long) (but it also does have footage from the Loppet Cup sprint semifinals, which were infamously a little hard for viewers at home to actually, well, view). For the time being, here are all the photos that were in that folder. I have sorted them by category. Enjoy.
Loppet Cup, Wirth Park, February 2024
World Cup or World Championships racing, from the last three seasons
Non-racing shots
The 2025/2026 World Cup season kicks off in Ruka next Friday. Best wishes to Diggins as she embarks on her final year of racing.
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