Jessie Diggins, 30, burst on the scene in Pyeongchang when she and teammate Kikkan Randall became the first Americans to win cross-country gold thanks to an incredible .19 second finish.
The big picture: The Minnesota native is also only the second American to win a medal in cross country in any Olympics and in January of 2021 made history again as the first American to win the multistage Tour de Ski, per Sports Illustrated.
- Diggins says she's not focused on gold, or even medaling in Beijing. “I have not set outcome goals for the Olympics,” Diggins told SI. “However, there are a lot of process goals. It’s this theme of trying really hard not to get stuck on the results.”
- Instead, she said, she focuses on the moment and each individual race. When she won gold, she did not realize she did not realize it until she saw her teammates crying.
- "Before I could even walk, I was in my dad's backpack as my parents skied different trails around Minnesota," she told NBC. "I owe everything in my career to them."
- Diggins has embraced her passion for activism since winning gold, working closely with two organizations: one that combats climate change and one that helps treat people with eating disorders.
The event: Cross-country skiing has been part of the Winter Olympics since the first Games in 1924, though a women's program wasn't added until 1952. The sport includes two styles and six competition formats.
- Styles: Classic requires the skis to remain parallel in pre-made tracks, while freestyle looks more like ice skating, and is much faster.
- Formats: There are four individual competitions and two in teams, with men and women covering different distances. Two events use freestyle, two use classic and two combine both.
Go deeper: Jessie Diggins is on a quest for more than medals (SI)