This month’s coverage of [global sporting event in Italy] is supported by Runners’ Edge Alaska. We sincerely appreciate their belief in what we are doing here.
By Noah Eckstein
It was never going to happen any other way. Even with sprint gold medalist Linn Svahn out with illness, the Swedish women would not be denied. Jonna Sundling and Maja Dahlqvist channeled any lingering resentment from a topsy-turvy relay into an absolute romp during Wednesday’s skate team sprint.
Behind them, the Swiss duo of Nadja Kälin and Nadine Fähndrich took a come-from-behind silver medal, while Germany’s Laura Gimmler and Coletta Rydzek snuck in ahead of Norway for bronze.
The American team of Jessie Diggins and Julia Kern could muster up no late-race heroics (unlike some other Americans this fine day) and faded to fifth, with Canadian pair Alison Mackie and Liliane Gagnon racing to a notable sixth.
It was a great day for ski racing in Tesero. Blue skies shone overhead, enthusiastic fans brought out an extra dose of national spirit, and a hard freeze overnight firmed up the tracks on the course’s two main climbs.
One particular Czechoslovakian wolf dog named Nazgul (ID’d thanks to Nat Herz’s determined reporting on this important matter) got so caught up in the vibe that he couldn’t help but join in the fun, bounding onto the course during qualifying and crossing the line just behind Konstantina Charalampidou of Greece and Tena Hadzic of Croatia. He wasn’t able to muster up a partner, though, so team sprint finals remained a sadly all-human affair.
Well, mostly human — the Swedish sprint women were once again so dominant as to seem a little bit extraterrestrial. Alien or not, they made their intent known from the gun. Sundling, working with Diggins, stretched the field out from the first climb of the first lap. Together they took a small gap over the top of the first hill, but Mackie’s determined chase, along with the speedy skis of Norway’s Astrid Øyre Slind, brought things back together again into the stadium for the first exchange.
After the tag, the speed immediately dropped. Gagnon and Norwegian Julie Bjervig Drivenes, sensing opportunity, pulled around Kern and Dahlqvist and took up the pacemaking. The group remained compact through the lap, and, on the approach to the stadium, Fähndrich and Jasmin Kahara worked their way to the front for the tag.
On lap three, Diggins’s aggression again brought her to the fore. On a mission to gain some separation before the closing laps, she charged up the hill out of the stadium, drawing Sundling with her once more. This time though, Sundling opted not to just hang out in her draft. The notoriously explosive Swede put in an enormous acceleration on the second, larger climb, immediately opening up daylight to the rest of the field. Diggins, chasing hard, could do nothing but watch her pull away. Not giving up, she led a pack also containing Finland, Norway, Switzerland, and Canada around the back end of the course, coming into the tag zone 2.3 seconds behind Sundling.
Kern did much of the work in the chase group on lap four but made little progress toward Team Sweden. Dahlqvist, the late substitution for an ailing Svahn, proved her merit by opening the gap a few additional seconds. Proving that Canada’s third-place qualification was no fluke, Gagnon appeared strong and confident, very much in the mix with the big names. She and Kahara both slingshotted around Kern on the approach to the stadium, bumping the American back into fourth position at the exchange.
Lap five saw Diggins move to the front of the chase pack and again crack open a small gap up the first climb and descent. Up the main climb, though, her repeated efforts and many minutes in the wind began to catch up to her. When Finland’s Jasmi Joensuu lit a rocket and surged past, Diggin couldn’t respond. Kälin and Gimmler, dangling precariously on previous laps, stayed close on her tails.
Up ahead, Sundling looked imperious. We often discuss the Swedish women’s sprint team as a collective powerhouse — they sweep so many podiums (tre kronor, truly) it almost doesn’t matter which white, yellow, and blue suit is perched at the top on any given day. Dahlqvist, in fact, went so far as to consider herself replaceable in a mixed zone interview with Expressen. “We probably had a third, fourth and fifth reserve who could have gone in and taken gold,” she said. “It’s a very strong team we have.
When her form is right, though, Sundling’s skating is singular. The way she applies power through the skis and poles is extraordinary, and watching her attempt to alter Earth’s orbit as she hopskated away from the field today was staggering.
By the final handoff, the winner was no longer in doubt. Behind, things were just getting going.
Finland tagged off 8.8 seconds behind the leaders, with the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, Norway, France, and Canada all between 11.5 and 14.1 seconds farther afield. Fähndrich, a World Cup veteran who knows a thing or two about pacing long sprint days, flipped a switch and took off up the course toward Kahara. Kern and Drivenes, leading the pack behind, had nothing to say.
By the halfway point of the final lap, Fähndrich had caught and passed the badly flagging Finn and began taking bites out of Dahlqvist’s lead. Drivenes then managed to catch and pass Kahara, followed shortly after by a hard-charging Rydzek. The Finn, well past her limit, lost an edge on the descent back toward the stadium and fell hard, capping a heartbreaking late-race collapse from a team very much hoping for a medal.
Onto the finish straight, Fähndrich’s monster push — the leg of the day, easily — brought her within a few seconds of Dahlqvist but not close enough to challenge for the gold. No matter, though — the normally-reserved Swisswoman was ebullient as she crossed the line and claimed her very well-deserved first Olympic medal. (She and teammate Laurien Van Der Graaff were fourth in this same race in PyeongChang, that of “Here comes Diggins!” fame.)
Equally thrilled were the German pair after Rydzek won a close free-skate sprint with Norway for bronze, both also taking home Olympic hardware for the first time.
Slind and Drivenes were not thrilled. “It’s so close all the time, why can’t we just succeed?” Slind wondered aloud to NRK. “There’s a difference between success and failure today. It’s so hard in the Olympics. I would have wished Julie a medal too.”
The NRK broadcast team was also having a tough time coming to terms with the result. They proceeded to dedicate a few minutes and many, many slo-mo replays to trying to determine whether some contact between Rydzek and Kahara on the final lap might be grounds for an obstruction appeal and possible relegation of the German team. It was nothing more than a racing incident, of course, so the Norwegians will have to come to terms with their wooden medal.
Kern faded hard over the closing minutes, crossing the line more than 11 seconds back. Despite taking on the pressure associated with the medal hopes that inevitably follow Diggins wherever she goes, Kern skied a strong race. Considering her best result in a skate sprint this year was a 15th place in Goms, keeping Team USA in with a chance until the last kilometer was a success. Fifth in the Olympics is pretty darn good!
After the race, U.S. coach Matt Whitcomb added some context around the tall task Kern faced today.
“Imagine the pressure you feel being, say, Klæbo’s teammate, you know, who’s trying to win every medal at the Olympics and so far is doing it,” Whitcomb said. “It’s similar to being Jessie’s teammate, and so I can sympathize with how challenging that must be. But she’s a competitor, you know? Even if this were an individual race today, she would put the same amount of pressure on herself. Julia is an incredible performer, and one thing you can always trust from her is that you’re going to get her absolute best.”
“For even a bronze medal to happen, both legs have to be firing exquisitely,” he went on. “That clearly wasn’t a perfect performance today. And that’s okay. We’re proud of the results. We swung as hard as we could. We did our best. We were prepared to win today, and we just didn’t.”
Diggins herself put forward a brave face after a race from which she was certainly hoping for more. “For me, it’s not about the result,” she said in the mixed zone. “You can only control your effort and the heart that you put into it, and we just put everything we had into it and I’m so, so proud of that. That’s all you can control at the end of the day and we left it all out there.”
Just behind Kern was Gagnon, skiing easily her best race of the season. Despite the wheels falling off a bit on the last lap, this is an excellent result for a very young team (Gagnon is 23 years old and Mackie just 20!), and both looked like real players in a deep and experienced field.
You’ll have to accept an apology from this site’s on-the-ground reporter [let’s call him “Gavin Kentch” –Ed.] about today’s thin selection of quotes from the women’s race. From him: “I did make a choice to go watch the men race and lose my fucking mind (rather than stand in mixed zone and huddle around the TV), and I stand by that choice.”
More to come from that race shortly, and tune in for the men’s and women’s 50-kilometer classic races on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
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 at 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.
