Golden girl Diggins is ready for more of the Olympic-sized spotlight

Stratton, Vt. resident Jessie Diggins poses for a portrait with the Tour de Ski trophy. (Getty Images)

The gold medal Jessie Diggins won in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games isn’t sitting on a mantel at her home in Stratton, Vt. 

It isn’t on display in any trophy case at Stratton Mountain School, from where the cross-country champion graduated in 2012. The medal isn’t enshrined at any local museum, or on display anywhere in order to encourage fellow racers to achieve their own greatness. 

Nope. You’ll find Diggins’ Olympic gold medal, the first ever for the United States in cross-country skiing, tucked away someplace in her parents’ basement in Minnesota. 

“I don’t even look at it,” the 30-year-old Diggins said. “Because every single day I have to earn the right to be proud of who I am, how I am as a teammate, and what I’ve done every single day. I try not to ride on the success of the past.”

Diggins said she is proud of the accomplishment because it reflects a lot of hard work but understands there is more to achieve. Still, these days, Diggins has a lot to be proud of. She entered the 2021-22 season as the defending overall World Cup champion. Diggins is the first American woman to ever don the title. She also won the Word Cup distance title last season, as well as the Tour de Ski earlier this year. During this Olympic season, she is the American face of cross-country skiing, at the forefront of a success the country has never seen in the sport. 

Diggins hopes there’s more to come. 

“I’m never going to be done,” she said. “I’m never going to hit a point in my career where I’m like, ‘nailed it.’ The most successful year of my life, at the end of the season, I went into review for things to work on. There’s always something to do.”

Diggins, a native of Afton, Minn., has another World Cup title in her sights, as well as the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. It was at PyeongChang in 2018 when she and teammate Kikkan Randall won the Olympic team sprint, making U.S. history. Earlier this month, Diggins earned a silver medal in the women’s sprint free race in Lillehammer, Norway. 

Not that having such a growing résumé should fill Diggins and her teammates with overwhelming confidence heading into this season. 

“It’s kind of a strange answer, but it doesn’t really,” Diggins said. “Because every single year, I feel like I get a chance to prove myself, working hard and earning my place. I’m not qualified for the Olympics. None of us are. I think it’s kind of cool that it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from or what you’ve done, you have to earn your place on the team. I love that about our sport. Nobody gets a free pass.” 

Diggins moved to Vermont at the end of her teenage years and trained at Stratton Mountain School, where she still currently works out during the offseason. 

“I loved (Stratton) so much that I started living there,” she said. “The training is pretty darned near perfect. The roller skiing is amazing, and we have an amazing partnership with the young athletes in that area.” 

She made note of fellow U.S. Ski and Snowboard team member Catherine Ogden, a skier six years Diggins’ junior who also trained at Stratton. “When you have a young Catherine Ogden on your heels, you know you’re going to ski with your best technique and you know she’s gong to be on it,” Diggins said. 

“It’s so fun to see every generation coming up and to really feel like you’re a part of that.” 

Diggins also is doing her part for the next generation by creating eyeballs for a sport that generally goes under the radar. She mentions that her recent success, she hopes, could help open the doorway for better opportunities for her teammates’ sponsorships. 

But she also helped others outside of her sport last year when she released “Brave Enough,” a book that chronicles the challenges of Diggins’ career, including an eating disorder during her teenage years.

“The book, for me, was definitely a passion project,” Diggins said. “Particularly the eating disorder chapters. That was the only thing that could have gotten me to write a book when I have no time.” 

Diggins said she is taken aback by the number of people who have reached out to her via handwritten letters. There were letters from male coaches who coach young women, thanking Diggins for teaching them about an important aspect of their job. There was a 50-year-old nurse who finally asked for help after reading what Diggins went through. 

“Amazing stories, amazing people,” Diggins said. “It helps me feel connected and, maybe it’s a very small thing, but it’s a way you can inspire people to take care of themselves. It was absolutely worth the scary vulnerability that went into it.” 

The book is now available in paperback, but Diggins won’t be launching any sort of media campaign to announce that. This season, her main focus is on the Olympic Games, looking for a repeat of the success that she found four years earlier. 

“Last year, the shift went toward (World Cup) overall when we knew it was a possibility,” Diggins said. “This year is most definitely on the Olympics.” 

Diggins said the way she trained during the offseason and into this season would help her slowly work up to one large peak come February. “How I build up to that has been really successful in past Olympics,” she said. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

She also prepares by focusing on her mental preparation and mental health. She saw a sports psychologist over the summer, discussing how she could react to certain situations, understanding the pressure that would come with being one her country’s most notable athletes. In the days leading up to PyeongChang, she noted, she had more than eight interviews in a single day. 

Ten days before the Games begin in Beijing, she and the entire cross-country team will black out all media requests in order to focus on the team and what Diggins called a “happy bubble,” from which the athletes will set expectations for the Olympics.

“It’s one thing to set goals, but it’s another thing to be really fixated on the outcome,” Diggins said. “Because at the end of the day, you cannot control the weather, you cannot control the wax and the speed of your skis, and you can’t control if someone else is just better than you. You can control your process, your preparation and the heart that you put into it.” 

Due to pandemic protocols, U.S. athletes will not be able to have their families attend the Games with them in Beijing. That will mean plenty of worldwide FaceTime and Zoom sessions for Diggins and her teammates, something she said won’t be all that different from PyeongChang, where she communicated with her family via phone from where they were staying two hours away. 

It’s just one way she plans on handling the attention that will come with being one of the primary faces of Team USA. 

“Mentally, I hope to absorb the pressure with as much grace as I can,” she said. “One benefit of having a target on your back is you can hopefully handle the pressure well, when at my first Olympics there were people that adorned that pressure for me so I didn’t have to feel it. It’s my way, and my chance, to pay it forward. If there’s a lot of pressure, that’s OK because I’ve been around for a long time now. 

“I do know how to take care of myself. I’m a big girl.”

Eric Wilbur can be reached at [email protected].