By Gavin Kentch
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If you don’t drop a sprinter before the finish, she tends to drop you at the finish. The women’s field in today’s 20-kilometer mass start skate, the closing race of both World Cup Finals and the 2025/2026 season, was reminded of this evergreen truth once more over five soggy laps of the 4km distance course at Lake Placid earlier Sunday afternoon.
Jonna Sundling, who had lurked near the front for much of the day, took the win with ease, capping off an extremely strong weekend for the powerhouse Swedish women’s team. Countrywoman Linn Svahn, who had been nowhere near the front for most of the past 45 minutes, finished second, giving Sweden seven of nine distaff podium spots on the weekend. Heidi Weng of Norway, who is (a) not a sprinter and (b) 34 years old, was third, a fair reward after pushing the pace at the front for much of the day.
Jessie “retiring” Diggins, in the final 20 kilometers of her coruscant career, finished twelfth, 16.5 seconds back, after an untimely, and unfortunate, fall in rough snow conditions on one of the final downhills.
This is perhaps heresy to even think, let alone commit to print, but since I owe you an honest accounting of the race, I have to share my take that I do not think that Diggins was realistically in position to contend for the podium even without the fall. There’s no way she beats the sprinters to the line, and Weng was already pulling away from her at this point, not to mention late-race sensation, and ultimate fourth-place finisher, young Karoline Grøtting of Norway.
I don’t think that Diggins particularly minded. She threw her arms in the air as she crossed the line, the happiest 12th-place finisher you’ll ever see. She hugged everyone. She hugged her husband. She hugged her mom. She hugged her dad. She hugged her sister. She hugged the lion’s share of athletes in the finish area. She hugged every other American skier seriatim, then waited until the final American finishers came in (Rosie Brennan, 57th, and Emma Albrecht, 59th) before leading a group hug. Brennan procured champagne and gleefully sprayed the entire crew.
The FIS broadcast crew gave Diggins the first on-camera interview; to put it mildly, this is seldom an honor afforded to the 12th-place finisher, but the production crew knew who people were there to see.
“That was really incredible,” said Diggins, through tears. “So many people out there cheering. I feel like I got to celebrate this moment with the whole world. I’m really gonna miss this, but I’m really, really thankful that I got to do this and that I got to be part of such an incredible team for so many years.”
Sundling got the second interview. “It was a really good day for me,” said the winner on the day. “I had good skis and it happened a lot during this race that many of us fell. And in the last hill I was like, Okay, now I need to jump over two persons.”
Sundling added, “It means a lot to close this season with this win.”
I should give you a little more play-by-play of the race as a whole before we go on here, but honestly, this part can be summarized pretty quickly. It was a five-lap distance race. Every lap had a high point a kilometer-plus out from the end, then was mostly downhill to the finish. The steady rain seemed to make the course ski pretty fast. I did not notice hugely discrepant ski speed out there among the leading athletes. And, by the way, it was the final race of a four-month season that began above the Arctic Circle in Ruka over Thanksgiving weekend; people were tired.
Putting all that together, either no one wanted to try to get away early today, or no one could. The pack simply stayed together at the front; as athletes headed out for the final lap, there were still 18 women within five seconds of the lead.
Weng had led much of the time to that point, with Diggins lurking near the front. The main drama had come in lap two, when Astrid Øyre Slind got tripped up on an uphill and fell. She, unfortunately, did so immediately at the feet of Frida Karlsson. The Swede managed to make her way back to near the front over the next few laps, though she surely had to burn some matches in the process.
Anyway. There were at least eight women still in position to contend for the win going into the final part of the final lap. Sundling used her unstoppable V1 to surge to the front on the final climb and solo in for the win by 3.5 seconds; she was never going to be caught out there. Svahn came from what felt like way back in the field up to the front at just the right time, deftly sidestepping a supine Diggins on her way to the podium. Weng didn’t fade so much as she was simply passed by the two sprinters, holding onto third for a well-deserved podium.
Grøtting had come seemingly out of nowhere to take the lead within the final two kilometers; the young skier in bib 28 would finish fourth, but hers was arguably the most exciting race of the day. Karlsson fell a second time, off-camera, on a late climb, ultimately finishing 15th. She seemed sanguine enough, though not as joyous as Diggins; no one was today.
“It’s a little bit chaotic,” said Slind, seventh overall, of a day with multiple falls, “with so many in the group all the time and fast tracks from behind. So the group was always gathering in the downhills. But it was fun. Lots of people watching and we were so happy to be here.”
“I felt pretty good,” echoed Karlsson, 15th, “but I fell twice, and the second time was in the finish uphill, so it was a bummer. But I’m just happy to finish this great season, and now we will just celebrate with the team.”
“I just wanted to find my own skiing and enjoy the last dance of this season,” Karlsson continued. “So I did my best, and sometimes you fall.”
Karlsson’s countrywoman Moa Ilar was 13th today. She finished the 2025/2026 World Cup season second in both the overall and distance standings, in each case behind Diggins. Ilar’s previous career bests here were 10th in distance and 12th in the overall, both last year; this season marked a huge step up for the 28-year-old.
“I actually felt quite good,” Ilar said afterwards. “I was more energized than I was expecting, so really happy actually. But it’s nice to end the season.”
It’s hard to stay focused across a four-month season, Ilar admitted. “It’s been a really long season and I’ve done every single race for the whole World Cup year,” she said. “So I’m really happy that it turns out to be a second overall and second in the distance cup. It’s been incredible.”
“I knew that I was tired,” she continued, “but the pace was a bit slower than I was expecting, so I’m happy with that.”
Also happy, if not delighted, was Rosie Fordham, who finished one spot back of Karlsson in 16th. This is superb, but somehow not even the best World Cup result of her career; she was 13th in a 10km skate in Davos last December. I was going to make a crack about the Aussie being the best cross-country skier to ever come out of Sydney, but the University of Alaska Fairbanks skier, and recent double NCAA champion, is surely the best skier to ever come out of anywhere in the entire country, so there’s that. Oi oi oi!
“I’m feeling great,” beamed the ever-upbeat Fordham at the finish. “That was awesome. I never thought I’d be able to just ski with a pack for the whole 20km on World Cup, so I’m stoked.”
“There’s been a a couple of highlights throughout the season,” said the redshirt senior of a year that saw her finish 13th on the World Cup, as noted, and 29th at the Olympics, “but this is definitely up there, if not the best.”
Peter Minde, the Nordic Insights man on the scene for the weekend, spoke with a full dozen women after the race (shoutout to Peter for some dogged reporting work in a cold rain), so we’re just gonna keep going here so that we can give more of the Americans their due. Diggins was pulled away from media to go ski with kids, anyway, in the One Last Lap ceremony [photo above shows some of the 600 (!) kids on scene for this], so I’ve already told you all that we’re going to get from her today.
So, here’s Katey Houser of Montana State, soon to be APU following her graduation this spring, who was 34th today. I know that today was all about Jessie, but this was a commendable result for a college kid in just her second career World Cup start (the first one came on Friday).
“It was super fun,” said Houser. “I feel like I would forget that it was a World Cup because I was just skiing with girls I’ve skied with for a while and looked up to, and then I would come around a corner and hear the crowd, and it was super awesome.”
Houser raced here in January, and described it as an “eight-thousand-people difference” between now and then. “But other than that, no, because it rained then, too.”
“I was starting in the back,” Houser said of her day, “which I wasn’t super used to. So I figured I would just kind of see how things spread out and try and keep my equipment to myself and not cause any falls and not get caught up in anything, and then find people that I knew I could ski with, and that’s what happened. And then everything just was awesome.” You love to see it.
Next up: Julia Kern, 43rd.
“The fans and spectators made up for the bad weather,” said Kern. “It was awesome.”
“I went in with an open mind,” was Kern’s take on her day. “I’ve been struggling with my lungs the last month so just being able to be in a place to race was a big goal of mine. And I still struggled in the race, but I was just happy to be out there in front of the fans so how the day went didn’t really matter, and I just was gonna meet me where my body was.”
Next American among folks we talked with: Sammy Smith, 50th.
“Well, definitely more of a sprinter so today was just kind of for fun,” said the best cross-country skier at Stanford. “But super fun to be out there racing and in front of a great crowd, and really exciting to be part of Jessie’s last World Cup sprinter.”
As for how a sprinter paces a 20km?
“Just kind of try and hang on,” Smith said. “I feel like I definitely have a lot of room to grow in distance skiing. I certainly prefer sprinting and I’m a lot more confident in that now, so just trying to embrace the distance races I do and learn from them.”
“She’s done so much for skiing in the United States,” Smith added of you-know-who, “and I’m super excited that she got to have her last World Cup starts at home and in front of such an incredible crowd. It’s a pretty incredible last race for her.”
Last, but empathically not least, Rosie Brennan was 57th today, in a race that she did more for the vibes than for the competition.
“I knew that I basically can’t go above threshold in skating without kind of severe problems,” said the veteran athlete who has shouldered multiple health challenges across the last few season. “So when I chose to do this race, it was just to enjoy the atmosphere and kind of have one last hurrah out there this year. So that’s what I did. And it was great that so many people were willing to brave this horrible weather to come and cheer for me and help me enjoy these last few laps.”
But n.b., this was the last few laps this year, not necessarily of her career.
“No,” said Brennan, politely, when asked if that was retirement champagne we had just glimpsed her hoisting. “I’m not sure what is next, but I need some time and distance to think about it.”
Oh, and lest I forget, your other American finishers today are Kendall Kramer, 28th; Hailey Swirbul, 31st; Ava Thurston, 32nd; Novie McCabe, 35th; Luci Anderson, 44th; Alayna Sonnesyn, 46th; and Emma Albrecht, 59th.
Speaking of retiring: Diggins leaves the day, and her career, with four overall Crystal Globes, four Distance Globes, four Olympic medals, seven World Championship medals, three Tour de Ski wins, 78 individual World Cup podiums (including 31 wins), 11 World Cup team podiums, and one Birkie win. Needless to say, these are, other than the Birkie win total, all records for American cross-country skiers, most of them by yawning gaps of margins.
Finally, the headline here is an allusion to this seminal piece in The New Yorker, by John Updike, on Ted Williams’s final home game. No comment on how long I’ve been sitting on that one in advance of today.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing, and then we made it 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.
