By Lukas Pigott
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After narrowly missing out to Jonna Sundling in the 20km skate in Ruka last weekend, Jessie Diggins got the better of everyone in the skiathlon today, taking a convincing win in her last season as a professional skier.
Diggins has clearly been in great form the entire season, racing well and wearing the World Cup leader’s jersey since Ruka. “It was really nice to have a really good day here in Trondheim!” Diggins told Norwegian national broadcaster NRK after the race.
“I was ready for it to be raining after last year,” she said. “It didn’t, but I packed my rain coat just in case! It was really nice to just have really awesome good skis out there today — I’m so thankful to the truck.”
Her teammates were clearly very happy for her, with Kendall Kramer telling Nordic Insights, “It was an amazing Jessie win! Her confidence and casualness is great and helpful to everyone.” She continued, “It is great for team morale and shows us that American training is strong!”
Alayna Sonnesyn (Team Birkie) backed that up, stating, “Always great to see Jessie win and inspiring to see her get some redemption here in Trondheim,” in a polite reference to Diggins’s struggles in the distance races in the World Championships last season.
The last time a skiathlon was raced at Granåsen arena in Trondheim, during world champs in March, Ebba Andersson (Sweden) took the victory away from Therese Johaug (Norway) by a narrow margin of 0.006 seconds, approximately one centimeter on the ground.
While Johaug has now retired, Andersson was ready to take today’s race from the start. The course, the same one used last season, consists of six laps of 3.3km, with the first three classic laps being on a harder course than the three skate laps.
Andersson was ready to use this to her advantage, setting a high pace from the start. Although she was never able to get a gap, her pace at the front meant that the front group was continually getting whittled down as the race went on.
Andersson was joined at the front for much of the race by Frida Karlsson (Sweden) and Astrid Øyre Slind (Norway), both looking strong despite the former having struggled with food poisoning the last few days and the latter returning to classic racing after an Achilles injury.
While Andersson, Karlsson, and Slind were interested in high speed from the start to reduce the field because of their relatively weak sprinting capabilities, Sundling had a different tactic. Last weekend’s winner of the 20km skate and therefore one of the pre-race favorites, Sundling had to hold onto the group and avoid being distanced. She managed this well for a while, but towards the end of the classic portion of the race, she started to struggle, losing contact with the main group.
This was somewhat surprising since there were relatively fast and firm conditions on the course today, although as Sonnesyn told us, “Conditions were starting to get pretty sugary on the classic course hills.” Andersson was however able to put on enough pressure to make it a relatively selective race.
In that main group and looking comfortable was Diggins. Her race last year ended with a 13th place, telling Nordic Insights back then that she “only had 60 percent of the grip I needed on my classic skis.” This year her skis looked good, and she was racing smart. She was clearly looking like she always had more to give, but continued to race conservatively, knowing that her main strength was in the skate part and the finish.
Going into the ski-exchange after three laps of a tough classic course the leading pack was reduced to only 12 skiers. The ski-exchange has often been the perfect stage for drama to play out, being another one of those “you can’t win the race there, but you can definitely lose it” moments. In the World Championships last season, it was Slind who had her race ruined here after her ski slid over the track to the other side of the course.
The main victim today was Julie Drivenes (Norway) who broke through this season by winning the season opener in Beitostølen. Today however, talking to NRK after the race, she explained that she hadn’t got her binding fully on so when she went to ski away her ski wasn’t connected to her boot. When she finally made it on her way, she realized that she had one skate pole and one classic pole, so she had to go back again.
Drivenes wasn’t the only one to have trouble changing skis today. The eventual race winner, Diggins, got tangled up with Karlsson going into the first two exchange boxes. Luckily they managed to avoid the incident becoming as nightmareish as Drivenes’s, both untangling fairly fast and not losing too much time from the encounter.
When asked about this incident after the race Diggins said, “Frida’s skis were in front of my box and I came under her and so… but it didn’t make or break the race — it didn’t end up mattering.”
Karlsson wasn’t as willing to forget about the incident. Speaking to Expressen after the race she said of Diggins, “First she runs over me, then she screams at me. I feel pretty stepped on. You don’t need more adrenaline when you’re in this situation.”
Karlsson responded in Swedish, she told the Swedish outlet. She demurred when asked to elaborate on the substance of her comments.
Back to racing: For the rest of the race Andersson continued to apply the pressure on the uphills stretching out the field, but everything came together on the downhills and flatter sections of the course.
In the final part of the last lap Diggins made her way to the front of the leading group, which still held ten skiers as they hit the bottom of the final climb. Diggins hit the climb at the front of the group following her adroit positioning.
On the final climb overlooking the stadium she accelerated and soon got a gap. Heidi Weng (Norway) was the closest and managed to cling onto the back of Diggins’s skis towards the top of the hill, but failed to carry enough speed over the top of the hill. This meant that she never fully got into Diggins’s slipstream, giving Diggins the perfect scenario going into the final corner. On the finishing straight Diggins kept her lead, raising her hands in the air to celebrate her 28th individual World Cup victory (30 including two team wins).
Weng followed in second with Andersson rounding out the podium. They were followed by Karlsson, Moa Ilar (Sweden), Slind, Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs (Norway) and Teresa Stadlober (Austria), all within 5.5 seconds of Diggins.
Diggins was full of praise for the wax techs after the race. “It’s really tricky — the conditions here can change really quickly and they have to work so hard,” she told NRK.
“It’s just hard to explain to people how hard the team behind the team works,” Diggins continued. “We are here racing, that is like one-third of the amount that the wax techs are skiing. They are doing so much, so I was thinking about how hard they were working [when I was] on the track, and I was just thinking, You just gotta do it for the whole truck. It was good motivation.”
When asked about how she viewed her chances of winning gold in this event at the Olympics in only just over three months, Diggins responded, “I’m more of a day-by-day type of girl, that’s pretty far into the future.”
After establishing with the interviewers that she had now won the only skiathlon of the season prior to the Olympics, she said, “Well, it’s nice to be one for one then!”
She continued, “It’s good practice today — just good to get the feeling of skiing in the skiathlon boots. When you switch to skating it’s really weird, your legs feel like jello and you have to switch techniques. So yeah, I think I could use a little more practice, but this was really good today.”
Her teammates Julie Kern and Rossie Brennan secured strong top-30 finishes, ending the day in 25th and 29th, respectively.
“Today was alright. I was nervous to do a longer race, but needed to continue to experiment with my body and see how it responds to different races,” Brennan wrote to Nordic Insights of her day. “I was happy with how I was skiing and just caught a pack I was excited to ski with before the exchange, then fumbled big time in the exchange and came out in the next pack so that was a huge bummer.”
She continued, “I don’t have the fitness and the conditions/course were such that it was very difficult to jump packs so there was no getting back to the pack I wanted to be in after that. I had some tough moments and some good in the skate, but struggled to make any moves in the end. I am happy to have fared ok for 20k and feel every race I do will help me build the fitness I need to be better later.”
Kern, who finished 25th, 1:47 behind Diggins, said after the race, “I knew the classic leg was going to be a battle for me. The course profile doesn’t necessarily play to my strengths, so I continued to fight to stay in the pack I was with, dangling at the back to keep the draft. I’m proud I was able to stay on until the exchange.”
“When we switched to skate, I felt really good on the first climb and was excited to try and move up. People were surging and dropping back, all over the place in the pack, and I tried to bridge up when moves were made. I’m proud of bridging up to our pack that split into two but didn’t quite nail the tactics and missed that original break in the final lap. I broke the race into two pieces mentally, hang tough for classic and ski to my strengths in the skate. When it got tough, I told myself this was effort and practice I needed to get into my race form and to dig deep.”
Sonnesyn and Kendall Kramer finished 44th and 48th. “Personally, I was happy with the way I was able to push my body today but bummed that I had a pretty significant crash on one of the classic downhills right before the exchange zone and I lost a big pack I was skiing with,” Sonnesyn said.
Kendall Kramer clearly gave it everything out there, telling Nordic Insights, “My race was a good hard fight from the first to last seconds. I tried to stay with groups and I am impressed and how strong and fast everyone around is!”
Racing continues in Granåsen tomorrow with 10km skate individual-start events. Can Diggins, who will be competing in probably her strongest race format, make it two for two in distance races? We’ll have to wait and see.
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