Jessie Diggins — with Olympic and World Championship golds, a Tour de Ski Title, and an overall crystal globe (and another one on the way), has successfully brought the World Cup to her backyard.

When the FIS cross-country ski World Cup arrives at Theordore Wirth Park Feb. 17-18, the final item on Jessie Diggins’ career bucket list can be checked off. 

“This has been a career-long dream of mine,” said the Stillwater graduate in a press conference one week after winning her second Tour de Ski — the pinnacle in-season prize on the world’s top Nordic ski circuit.

Diggins has undoubtedly accomplished more in her sport than any North American skier. She won her country’s first Nordic Olympic gold medal in 2018 and followed it up with silver and bronze four years later. Her GOAT status was cemented with a sterling 10-kilometer individual start freestyle world championship title last winter in Planica. 

But Diggins isn’t ready to put the storage wax on her Salomon skis for good quite yet. 

For one thing, she’s having too much fun. 

“This year has been a big surprise,” the current overall World Cup points leader said. “A happy surprise.” 

Part of the shock stems from Diggins’ revelation going into the season that her eating disorder had relapsed. The transparent role model vowed to take things one day at a time and prioritize her mental health. Now, the odds-on favorite to claim a second overall crystal globe — given to the athlete who accrues the most World Cup points across both distance and sprint events — Diggins said wearing the yellow bib target hasn’t changed her approach at all.  

“I’m seeing racing as this incredible absolute gift and privilege,” she said. “Instead of ‘oh you should go and win these races’ it’s like, ‘I didn’t even know if I would be racing, so I’m just going to go out and do my best.’” 

Throughout her 13-year professional career, she’s learned when she competes with a smile — and some signature glitter or striped relay socks — she tends to race well.

“But it could also be that I’m 32 and I’ve been doing this a very long time and that’s a lot of accumulated fitness,” she aptly added.

The start of that journey was the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where Diggins won the high school state cross-country ski title three times. 

A sought-after senior, Diggins passed up a full-ride academic scholarship to ski at a prominent Nordic university to fully focus on her sport at the professional level. The straight-A student’s calculus behind delicately placing all her eggs in the skinny-ski basket wasn’t tied to a far-out fantasy of becoming the greatest of all time. It was about reaching her own potential.

“Whatever that would be, I just wanted to know that I gave myself the full honest shot to reach it,” she said.

“I realized the kind of person I am: I am someone who does not like to do things halfway and I do not like ‘what-ifs.’ … I’m happy with how it’s worked out.”  

Diggins not only wears her bubbly personality on her sleeve, but exudes her character with every ounce of her blood-and-guts racing acumen. That John Woodenesque definition of success gives way to an all-in approach to every race and workout — no matter the stakes — which mirrors the only other cult icon who’s status in the niche endurance sports sphere can compare: Steve Prefontaine.

In fact, Diggins offers one of the only certainties in a sport where finishing order can be a finicky formula of fitness, economy and ski wax (or grinds…or flex): at the end of most races, she collapses from exhaustion at the finish line.

“It’s not just how hard you train, how good is your technique, how fast are your skis – so much of it is how much are you willing to suffer and how far can you push yourself,” she said. When she’s really tapping out her efforts, Diggins said she feels numb from the waist down. Her body feels on fire. It’s hard to breathe. Her vision turns pink and the sound turns down. When she’s lying in the cold snow, “it feels like everything is spinning.” 

“I love how I feel when I’m racing,” she said. “Even though it’s incredibly painful.” 

In a sport where complex quadrupedal techniques require pinpoint balance and coordinated timing akin to dribbling a basketball while riding a bicycle across a slackline, Diggins eschews the aura of Scandinavian superiority which rigidly hones picture-perfect form from diapers to death. Her style is filled with an American spirit — beating everyone by sheer power of will. 

“(I) use my brain to override my fitness and kind of outski my capabilities,” Diggins said of her self-proclaimed “pain cave” specialty. 

Still, true to her Midwest roots, Diggins has pulled herself up by the bootstraps — or classic ski bindings — to master her one noticeable weakness this season: the traditional kick and glide. She spends three weeks on snow in New Zealand every summer, dialing in her timing and her wax pocket. This year it paid off. She’s been on the podium in two classic races and in the top-10 in eight. 

When asked to explain her improvements, she’s speechless. 

“If I knew what it was, I would have done it so long ago,” she said. 

“There hasn’t been any one thing that has changed. I think a lot of it is simply not giving up on it.” 

Few things could be more Minnesotan than that.

Return Home

The last time Diggins came to Theodore Wirth was in 2011. The 19-year-old came straight from her first FIS world championships in Oslo to win three titles in her final junior national championships.

“So this is very full circle for me,” she said of the Minneapolis World Cups, which she was instrumental in organizing. She knows the stands will be packed with family and friends. 

“I know it will be so exciting, but also a fair amount of pressure,” she said, adding that when she toes the line at the 50th annual American Birkiebeiner — the biggest race in North America by far — the following weekend, she won’t be out for a casual stroll. 

“I really struggle to do anything at less than 100%,” she said with predictability even a non-skier could probably have called at this point. 

“Doing the Birkie…I will be going for it.” 

Understanding her hunger is part and parcel of understanding elite athletes. It’s also about understanding Minnesotans — beyond the hot dish and the politeness. 

When this chapter closes, Diggins’ accomplishment of bringing the World Cup to Minnesota won’t be as significant as how — for the last decade-plus — she’s brought everything she learned in Minnesota to the World Cup.

“I can race well in the cold,” she says, pointing out the most surface-level gift the North Star state gave her. Her toughness, however, is only one defining character trait. The other is her team-centered leadership and focus on process over product. 

“I would say, I learned a lot about racing with joy and about leadership and being a part of a team from my high school.” 

Having been asked to regale a defining Minnesota moment or mentor, Diggins recalled a seventh-grade memory. Her coach, Kris Hansen used to tell the middle schooler after every race — ”before checking the results” — to come up with three things she did well and three things she could have done better.

“It wasn’t just about winning…and it was about being a good teammate, first and foremost. How you can make the team a better place, how can you be there to support your teammates,” she said, recalling how she’d clip out of her skis after winning races to go back and cheer for her fellow Ponies. It’s a habit she can’t shake, whether it’s at Giants Ridge or Lillehammer. 

“That’s the sort of thing I learned in MN and I think that’s the sort of thing I was able to bring to this team and the World Cup,” she said. “And that’s the most important thing.” 

As she mentors the next prodigy, Sammy Smith – the 18-year-old took Diggins on a paragliding adventure during the team’s recovery week in Livigno after the Tour de Ski – it’s as if the Minnesotan knows that if she did things right in her career, someone else will inevitably take the baton. And maybe raise the game even more. 

Someone else will approach her all-time World Cup win total — and add to it.

Someone else will win gold medals — and take down the Norwegians.

Someone else might even bring the World Cup back to their hometown. 

But no one can bring their hometown to the World Cup quite like her. Simply put, there will probably never be another Jessie Diggins.

Her ‘why’ is twofold: she loves what she’s doing and values the platform success grants.

“When I’m in the pain cave and I’m wondering why exactly I’m stumbling up a mountain when I can’t feel my legs and my lungs are on fire…there’s a lot of reasons why I want to get to the top,” she said before describing her work with Protect Our Winters and The Emily Program, which helped her navigate her eating disorder during high school.

“When you win the TDS, you get to talk about all the causes and things that you care about. And that’s a really powerful motivator for me.”

The other is the sensation that only comes from man-powered gliding on two skis over snow.

“When I put on a bib and go out on the race course, I feel so powerful and strong and confident,” she added. 

“And I know what I’m doing, and I know what I want, and I know how I want to do it. And that is an amazing feeling.”

Diggins hasn’t penciled in a date for retirement. She’d like to give her husband and family a chance to watch her compete at one more Olympics. She said she knows her body will hold up, but packing her suitcase for another five-month tour of Europe creates a cost-benefit analysis.

“I think the biggest consideration will be, is it still fun and is it still worth the sacrifices?” she asked.

“I think at some point the joy of racing won’t really outweigh the sacrifices that go into it. And then we’ll know it’s time.”