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Tag: World Cup Overall

  • Svahn Goes the Distance, Diggins Clinches Crystal Globe

    Svahn Goes the Distance, Diggins Clinches Crystal Globe

    This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award, or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage, please contact info@fasterskier.com.

    Linn Svahn (SWE) showed that she is no one-dimensional sprinter, holding off the season’s dominant Distance skier —Swedish teammate, Frida Karlsson—for the win in the FIS World Cup Final 10 k Classic Interval Start in Lake Placid. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)

    FasterSkier’s reporters watch every single race of the World Cup and Olympic season, so we have our own ideas regarding what may happen on any given race-day. We’ve followed who has been progressing up the standings, who has been fading, who has been injured or ill and how their recovery has progressed. And we follow the amazing and durable actions of Jessie Diggins (USA) who has competed in every single race of the season (That’s right, isn’t it? Someone check the record . . .). Alone among all World Cup competitors, Diggins continues to devote herself to performing at the highest levels on every available race day. If she’s tired, she deals with it. If she gets sick, she overcomes it. If she’s injured, she races through it. If there’s a start line and a finish line, drawn on the snow Diggins is racing. While it may be argued that she might’ve performed even better if she took a day off from time to time, evidently it’s impossible for her to just sit out those race opportunities. And Diggins is also one of only two skiers in the world (along with Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo) who has an honest chance to win on any given day, regardless of distance or discipline. And the reward for such devotion and fortitude?

    All eyes were on Jessie Diggins (USA) whose career is winding down to retirement, but not before another excellent top-five performance in the 10 k Classic, and the clinching of another World Cup Crystal Globe. (Photo:  Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    Any day’s race coverage begins with a check of the start list; that’s how we see the first inclinations of how the story might unfold. Here’s the context of today’s 10 k Classic Interval Start: perennial contenders, Ebba Andersson (SWE) and Kerttu Niskanen (FIN) have chosen to stay home home, Krista Parmakoski (FIN) retired at eh Holmenkollen finish line, and Dariya Nepryaeva (AIN) wasn’t allowed into the country (no American visas issued to Russian citizens) . . . The rest of the contenders appeared to be present. Among the logical contenders within the women’s field were those whose performances shined brightest this season, but whose illnesses and injuries kept them from contention in the year-long FIS World Cup competitions. Frida Karlsson (SWE) is undoubtedly the fastest skier in the world today as she proved repeatedly in the Olympic Winter Games and the recent Holmenkolen 50 k. She is joined by a list of other Distance contenders including Heidi Weng (NOR), Astrid Oeyre Slind (NOR) Karoline Simpson-Larson (NOR), Jonna Sundling (SWE), Moa Ilar (SWE), and Olympic Sprint champion Linn Svahn (SWE).

    Host-nation USA was allowed additional entries. In addition to the much-anticipated participation of Diggins, the American roster included Emma Reeder, Alayna Sonnesyn, Katey Houser, Renae Anderson, Emma Albrecht, Samantha Smith, Novie McCabe, Kendall Kramer, and Rosie Brennan.

    “It’s really awesome to know how many people care about skiing in America,” Kramer said in response to the crowds of eager spectators gather around the course. “It’s heart warming!”

    “I love racing at home!” said Brennan. “It’s so awesome. I had many moments when I was second-guessing myself out there. then Id get to a hill and everyone was going nuts, yelling my name, and I was like ‘Okay, I got this! I got this!”  ‘

    “Honestly, I don’t care about the results,” beamed Diggins after the finish. “I just wanted to enjoy the crowd, and feel the love and the excitement, and just go as hard as I could! Laying in the snow there at the end, I was like ‘That was one of the best 10ks of my life.’”

    In the end, it was Svahn winning a back-and-forth battle with her good friend, Karlsson. Sweden would top the podium, but Heidi Weng would prove the best of the rest, finishing 22 seconds behind the winner. Diggins would battle through the falling snow to secure a fifth place finish in the final interval start race of her career.

    Frida Karlsson (SWE) surged to a mid-race lead, but it was not enough to overcome the momentum of her teammate, Linn Svahn. (Photo: Modica/NordicFocus)
    Not Yet Spring

    While the field—and the spectators—may have been hoping for sunny and mild spring conditions. Wouldn’t that have been nice? But Lake Placid sits at an elevation of 2200 feet—quite high for the east coast—and spring is notoriously late to arrive in these Adirondack mountains. Race day dawned with dense cloud and swirling snow, conditions that seemed likely to challenge ski technicians and skiers, alike.

    The 10 k Classic would be skied over two five kilometer laps climbing immediately from the stadium into the woods. Svahn was the revelation among early starters, totally gapping the rest of the field at all early check points. At the halfway mark of the race, Svahn led all earlier starters by nearly a minute! Later starters among the top seed would begin whittling into Svahn’s times, but even Karlsson would trail by eleven seconds at the first checkpoint, with her teammate, Sundling, another five seconds behind.

    Diggins started in bib 58. She would trail Svahn by 23 seconds at the first checkpoint (13 seconds behind Karlsson, 10 seconds behind Slind). The contenders’ splits were bunched near the front, but it was definitely Svahn who appeared strongest. Svahn continued to hold that lead over Karlsson at the 3.8 kilometer checkpoint, by which time Diggins had managed to take six seconds out of Svahn’s lead.

    Svahn would surge again in the middle kilometers to put another six seconds into Diggins, but the splits identified the next serious challenger as Slind pulled within just a few seconds. And that’s when Karlsson made her move, pulling even with Svahn at 6.7 kilometers. Had Svahn gone out too fast?

    Svahn has won 14 Sprint races in her career, but it is less known that she’s also won three Distance races. She is certainly no slouch when it comes to long events, and she obviously possess great endurance ability. That’s what she must’ve drawn upon in the later kilometers as—despite the charge from Karlsson—Svahn would finish in a dominant 29:04, surging to the victory by 1.4 seconds to claim the first Individual Start Distance victory of her career.

    Diggins would thrill her fans with another gutsy performance, giving her all—as she has always been known to do—in finishing fifth on the day. She extended her lead in the Overall World Cup standings over her closest rival, Sweden’s Moa Ilar, virtually closing out that competition for the fourth time in Diggins’ illustrious career.

    World Cup Final Women’s 10 k Classic RESULTS

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    Frida Karlsson (SWE) gave it her all in Lake Placid, only to fall just short of the performance of her good friend, Linn Svahn. (Photo: Thibaut/NordicFocus)

    World Cup racing continues from Lake Placid this weekend:

    Saturday, March 21

    10:30 am | Women’s Sprint Qualification Free

    11:05 am | Men’s Sprint Qualification Free

    1:00 pm | Women’s Sprint Final Free

    1:00 pm | Men’s Sprint Final Free

    Sunday, March 22

    12:30 pm | Men’s 20km Mass Start Free

    2:30 pm | Women’s 20km Mass Start Free

    4:30 pm | ONE LAST LAP w/Jessie Diggins & the Retiring Stars

  • A Historic Season For Diggins: World Cup Overall Champion

    A Historic Season For Diggins: World Cup Overall Champion

    Jessie Diggins during the Ruka, Finland classic sprint – the start to her 2020-2021 World Cup campaign. (Photo: NordicFocus)

    This World Cup coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and their A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. To learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award or to learn how you can support FasterSkier’s coverage please contact info@fasterskier.com.

    This is a story that might make Jessie Diggins cringe. We’re here to render her efforts to the singularity of cross-country ski results. (A quick nod – her default is to defer to her team, and to only reluctantly ruminate on herself.)

    Last month, with the conclusion of racing in Ulricehamn, Sweden, and the subsequent canceling of World Cup races in Nové Město, Oslo, and Lillehammer (although the Oslo weekend was replaced with two distances races in Engadin, Switzerland), American Jessie Diggins had locked up the overall World Cup. She’s the first American woman to win the overall crystal globe. Back in 1982, Bill Koch became the first American to win the overall.

    Diggins’ season has been dreamy. She won the Tour de Ski. She barely missed out on two medals at the 2021 World Championships when she placed fourth in the 10 k skate and the 4 x 5 relay (but oh so close). Diggins stood on eight podiums this season before Engadin and bested one of the world’s greatest ever distance skiers, Norway’s Therese Johaug, in Falun, Sweden’s 10 k skate, the first time an athlete has raced faster than Johaug in the format since 2016.

    This is as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room: the dearth of Norwegian starts on the World Cup due to the pandemic. Norway pulled from World Cup competition after the opening weekend, only to rejoin the circuit on January 23rd in Lahti, Finland. Compounding Norway’s decision, Finland pulled skiers post-Ruka (the opening weekend) until the Tour de Ski, as did Sweden. But, you race against those who show up.

    Diggins showed up. And she showed up during this funk of a dryland season having not been on snow until arriving in Europe in November.

    Her Ruka, Finland races, the start to the World Cup season, ended with a 15th overall (fifth fastest time of day in the pursuit) in the three-race series. On to Davos, Switzerland, where she placed 13th and then 7th on the weekend. In Dresden, Germany, she placed fourth in the sprint. The points began to accumulate. After Dresden, Diggins was 8th overall in the overall World Cup standings with 191 points, whereas her teammate Rosie Brennan led with 377 points.

    If you’ve followed Diggins’ career, you’ll know she warms into the season. She often finds better form in the Tour de Ski. There she opened with a third-place sprint. She followed up with a third, first, first, third, ninth, and 10th, then second on the final mass start climb. She won the Tour, a first for a North American, with Russian Yulia Stupak second, and Sweden’s Ebba Andersson third.

    Jessie Diggins becomes the first North American skier to win the Tour de Ski in its 15-year history. (Photo: NordicFocus)

     

     

    Diggins during the Tour de Ski’s classic pursuit in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Diggins won the Tour, adding to her collection of points towards the World Cup overall. (Photo: NordicFocus)

    With her flurry of points scored during the Tour, Diggins came away as the yellow-bib-wearing overall World Cup leader with 932 points to Stupak’s 802 in second.

    With a short rest, Diggins returned to racing in Lahti, as did the Norwegians. She placed fifth in the skiathlon. In that race, in which Therese Johaug won in her usual dominating fashion, Diggins missed silver by two seconds.

    In Falun, Diggins made it very real with her 10 k skate win over Johaug. She then placed 7th and 8th, respectively, to close out the Falun stop. In Ulricehamn, in what turned out to be the final racing before World Championships in this Covid-19-truncated season, she placed fourth again in a sprint.

    Racing is no riddle for Diggins. In other words, when she enters a sprint, she’s no one-dimensional distance skier angling for sprint points. She can win. The same goes for distance events. With race cancellations this season, the schedule skewed more heavily towards skate races – a format Diggins has historically excelled in. However, the term overall means just that, skate and classic, sprint and distance. Diggins, known foremost as a skate skier, included two podiums in classic this season, both third places and both during the Tour de Ski. She also earned four other top-10s in classic. Her bread and butter remains skating. According to FIS, Diggins had a single skate race out of the top-10 this season, a 13th in the Davos skate sprint. Of the rest, the worst was a 7th place in the Davos 10 k skate. All the others were top-fives, including five podiums: a third place, a second place, and two wins all during the Tour de Ski, and her win in Falun.

    On the sprint points list, Diggins is fourth overall. On the distance list, she’s first with 552 points, to Andersson’s 490 in second (both Stupak and Brennan have 444 points in a tie for third). Statistically, although Diggins has secured the overall, the distance globe is still up for grabs with two distance races this weekend.

    Back in 2018, Diggins was second in the overall World Cup, and third on the distance list, her best final rankings to date. Ingvild Flugstad Østberg of Norway won the overall that season.

    Jessie Diggins locked in for the win: Falun, Sweden 10 k skate. (Photo: NordicFocus)
    The women’s 10 k skate podium from Falun, Sweden: Therese Johaug (NOR) second, Jessie Diggins (USA) first, and Ebba Andersson (SWE) third, (l-r). (Photo: NordicFocus)

    The barrier-breaking continues for Diggins. Living out of a few duffles, on the road from November until the end of March, she also juggled a minefield of Covid protocols during this time. The added stress of a pandemic and the reality that North Americans cannot simply head home for a week of rest between races, adds context to a season peppered with deep-nasal swab Covid-19 testing.

    “It’s really exciting because I feel like this is something we have really worked towards as a team, and something we have been building a lot of momentum towards for many many years,” said Diggins during a streamed press conference organized by FIS earlier this week. “I think the first thing I feel is a lot of gratitude because this is something that you cannot achieve alone.”

    She went on to thank the cadre of wax techs, coaches, sponsors, teammates, and supporters who have been part of her success.

    “To be able to do anything in the same sentence as Bill Koch is really cool; I have been looking up to him for a very long time,” Diggins said of her legacy now being linked with some of America’s most accomplished skiers. “Also, of course, looking up to Kikkan with her sprint globe wins, so it is really cool to be the first to do something and have the opportunity to say yes this is totally possible.”

    Diggins crossing the finish for fourth overall during the 2021 World Championship 10 k skate. (Photo: NordicFocus)