‘Sparkly’ Diggins seeks cross-country gold for US
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Jessie Diggins is hard to believe, so bubbly it feels forced, so energetic it seems unsustainable. People ask if she’s fake. She gets that a lot.
No one in any walk of life — let alone an elite Olympic athlete in a sport that requires such grueling training for such little glory — can emanate such positivity all the time.
But Diggins, a 26-year-old from Minnesota who is third in the World Cup standings and a legitimate Olympic medal contender, isn’t faking her demeanor. She is working at it, and always has been.
Combining concerted effort to hone her mental approach with a deep commitment to self-exhaustion in training, Diggins has become the United States’ most promising hope for an Olympic medal in women’s cross-country skiing. No American woman has reached the podium at an Olympics, and her quest to do so begins Saturday in the 7.5 x 7.5-kilometer skiathlon.
Unafraid of questions or cameras, Diggins describes herself with a word rarely used for Olympians not wearing figure skating costumes: “sparkly.” She proudly declares herself the official “cross-country team cheerleader.”
Diggins posts giddy Instagram posts, most with a smile or inspirational message, and writes copiously about positive thinking on her blog. Some years ago she choreographed a team dance video that involved coaches and technicians. And she is clear in her priorities: Diggins would rather be part of a winning team relay than win an individual medal. As admirable as it sounds, the mind-set held her back for years.
As long ago as 2011, when she skied the anchor leg at the world championships as a teenager, Diggins would shine in relays, a clutch skier able to rise to the occasion. In individual races, however, her splits were never quite as good.
“On relay days I would have this superwoman alter ego: I know how to do this,” Diggins said. “I had to transfer that belief and confidence to my individual races, and learn that it’s OK to care about my own results as much as I care about the team.”
Diggins spent eight years working with a sports psychologist for a less traditional kind of training. Little by little, her individual results improved. By the time she won the 10-kilometer freestyle in her final event before the Olympics, she was reaping the results of two Olympic cycles of mental and physical training.
“She’s figured out that if she can tap into getting good results on a specific day when the team depends on her, why can’t she do that when she’s racing for (herself)?” her longtime coach Jason Cork said.
While individual skiers on the U.S. team often compete against each other, it’s easy to root for her teammates. Diggins pushes them and they push her, she said, so they share in their successes.
“I’d say like 80 to 85 percent of the time she’s as bubbly as that person you see on Instagram,” Cork said. “But she’s definitely human, as every athlete is. … Working with a sports psychologist when things get her down, she’s got a good outlet. And a good support system around her — parents, boyfriend, me — that let her vent a little bit, then get over it.”
With her success has come pressure. Only one American has won an Olympic cross-country medal — Bill Koch, silver, 1976. Diggins grew up with a poster of Koch on her wall. It’s still there. But she won’t measure her success by whether she follows him to the podium.
“The only disappointment I will feel is if we somehow don’t give it everything we have, and if I manage to somehow hold back,” Diggins said. “I’ve never done that before, so I don’t know why I would here.”