The previous couple of seconds are brutal. They’re presupposed to be. Irrespective of how a lot or how exhausting Jessie Diggins trains, she by no means expects to really feel good when she pushes towards her absolute restrict on the finish of a race. Generally she squeezes a lot out of her physique that her imaginative and prescient tints—“the whole lot begins to look a little bit bit pink or yellow, regardless that I’m not carrying coloured glasses”—and generally her legs really feel numb. By the point she crosses the end line, she says, “I’m positively, like, near blacking out.”
That feeling explains, as a lot as something, why Diggins made historical past in PyeongChang together with her thrilling, come-from-behind photograph end, winning (with now retired Kikkan Randall) the staff dash freestyle race to earn the U.S.’s first gold medal in girls’s cross-country snowboarding for the reason that Winter Video games began in 1924. It explains why she will win more medals in Beijing. It even explains why she will probably be O.Okay. if she doesn’t medal in any respect.
“You simply go as exhausting as you may,” Diggins says. “And you then by no means need to ask your self: What if I simply tried? What if I’d dedicated? What if I had been prepared to be the one that provides probably the most? I’d like to be the one that wins. However the one factor I’ve management over is [being] the one that provides probably the most.”
She provides, “I haven’t checked out my Olympic medal in a very long time. It lives in my dad and mom’ basement.” What she sees, as an alternative, are the ripple results from winning.
Thomas Lovelock/Sports activities Illustrated
She has seen children pretending they had been her, lunging on the end line of an imaginary race to edge an opponent. Like many U.S. Olympians, she relishes seeing People begin to love her sport as a lot as she does. She additionally says winning “positively has modified the quantity that I really feel I’m in a position to give back, as a result of it provides you this superb platform.” She is on the board of Shield Our Winters, a Boulder, Colo.–primarily based group that pushes for laws to fight local weather change. She is a spokesperson for the Emily Program, which helps individuals deal with consuming issues just like the one Diggins had as a youngster rising up in Afton, Minn.
If she had solely pursued gold, she would have all she needed, and he or she would possibly really feel empty. However she will at all times hold pursuing that feeling.
When Diggins gained with Randall in 2018—and joined 1976 Winter Olympics silver medalist Invoice Koch as the one People to make the rostrum in the game—she did so as a result of she was so dedicated to the ache. She didn’t cross Sweden’s Stina Nilsson till the ultimate meter of the race, on the final of the six complete laps cut up between the 2 teammates on the five-mile course. After extending the tip of her ski throughout the end line, she was so exhausted that she couldn’t course of the historical past she had made, by a mere 0.19 seconds.
Diggins kicked off 2021 with a record-breaking Tour de Ski win in early January.
Federico Modica/NordicFocus/Getty Photos
“Within the second, to be trustworthy, I wasn’t even fascinated with the truth that we’d gained the Olympics,” Diggins says. “It was simply this race—like several race, you realize, you simply attempt to race in addition to you may. And I used to be stuffed with the adrenaline and the emotion and the second of executing an excellent race.”
When she lifted herself out of the snow and rotated, she noticed coaches on their knees. Her U.S. teammates had been crying. Diggins thinks of cross-country snowboarding as a staff sport even when she is competing in a person race, and that helps her keep motivated, too. She pursues that feeling as a result of she is competing for all people else.
Diggins is 30 in a sport the place elite athletes can contend for a very long time. She says, “I don’t really feel like I’m at my peak,” however she defines peak in another way than you would possibly suppose. She doesn’t imply she’s going to win more gold medals or race sooner. She means she will get higher in small methods: approach, techniques, consistency.
“I actually have tried to reframe stress as this superb privilege to be in this level of my profession the place I’m trying for these tiny, tiny enhancements and getting excited,” Diggins says. “There’s at all times going to be one thing for me to enhance on. I’m by no means going to be bored. And that’s so cool.”
That’s to not say her exhausting work hasn’t paid off—notably this season. In January 2021, Diggins captured probably the most prestigious particular person title of her profession, changing into the primary American to win the multistage Tour de Ski. Final March she made historical past once more as the primary U.S. lady and simply the second American to seize the general FIS Cross-Nation Ski World Cup title. Getting into her third Olympics, she’s poised to steer a younger U.S. staff in Beijing.
Diggins has not but made a remaining resolution on how most of the six attainable occasions (particular person dash, staff dash, pursuit, particular person begin, mass begin and the relay) she’s going to race in China, however she is aiming to match her full slate from PyeongChang, the place she completed seventh or higher in all six. As soon as she arrives, Diggins will consider her type and think about the situations—she embraces frigid climate, however says, “if it’s tremendous, tremendous chilly, that’s an enormous power drain on the physique”—earlier than solidifying her schedule. What she does know is how she’s going to race. She can not management what different skiers do or the climate or the place she finishes, however she will management how exhausting she goes. She acknowledges that after winning Olympic gold, “the stress is completely different, for certain.” However she has a plan for coping with that.
Competing in her third Olympics, Diggins will lead a younger U.S. staff in Beijing.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports activities Illustrated
“I’ve not set consequence targets for the Olympics,” Diggins says. “Nonetheless, there are a variety of course of targets. It’s this theme of making an attempt actually exhausting to not get caught on the outcomes.”
Diggins was prepared in 2018—not simply for the previous couple of meters of that staff dash, or to win Olympic gold, however for the whole lot that adopted. The identical method that put her atop the rostrum helped her when she stepped off it.
“You don’t get a free cross for life since you gained the Olympics,” Diggins says. “It’s important to work each single day to be an excellent particular person, and an excellent teammate. And so in that approach, it hasn’t modified my life in any respect.”
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