U.S. pulls upset to win gold

gins chased down Stina Nilsson of Sweden and outstretched her at the finish to win by 0.19 seconds. Norway claimed the bronze. Diggins collapsed in the snow, and soon Randall was piling on top of her, celebrating a moment 46 years in the making. Randall said the first words out of Diggins’ mouth were, “Oh my gosh, did we just win the Olympics?”

“It feels unreal; I can’t believe it just happened,” Diggins said. “But we’ve been feeling so good these entire games, and just having it happen at a team event means so much more to me than any individual medal ever would.”

The Americans’ winning time — 15:56.47 — was a 26-second improvement on their semifinal effort. But the gold was not their first milestone. In 2013, Randall and Diggins won a world championship gold medal — the first for the United States — by taking the women’s team sprint by almost 8 seconds. In 2017, they won individual medals at the worlds: Diggins took home the silver in the sprint and Randall the bronze.

Diggins also won the bronze in the team sprint, skiing with Sadie Bjornsen.

Those achievements produced high expectations for the American women in Pyeongchang. A book has been written about them, and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association promoted them extensively heading into the games. But American women have arrived at the Olympics before with a decent shot at a medal, only to be stymied by their rivals.

That situation seemed to be repeating itself through the first 11 days of these Olympics. Diggins finished fifth in the women’s skiathlon, the highest Olympic finish to that point for a U.S. woman, but out of the medals.

Then she was sixth in the sprint, running out of gas in the finals. Then came the 3.3-second miss in the 10-kilometer race.

“I pushed my body so far past its limits I’m actually kind of amazed I didn’t pass out on that final climb,” she wrote on Instagram.

Sprinting — especially uphill — is her specialty though, and this course, which includes two nasty ascents, gave her and Randall an opportunity for a prize that had eluded U.S. skiers for more than four decades.

The team sprint — especially on this brutal course — is a sadistic event. It requires two skiers to take turns skiing three legs each of 1.25 kilometers.

With two rounds of racing for the top 10 teams, that means six all-out sprints for each skier, with a little more than an hour to recover between the semifinals and the final.