{"id":2890,"date":"2026-03-19T09:26:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T09:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/jessie-diggins-u-s-cross-country-star-arrives-at-the-epic-end-of-her-career-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T09:26:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T09:26:52","slug":"jessie-diggins-u-s-cross-country-star-arrives-at-the-epic-end-of-her-career-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/jessie-diggins-u-s-cross-country-star-arrives-at-the-epic-end-of-her-career-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessie Diggins, U.S. cross-country star, arrives at the epic end of her career – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympics
Jessie Diggins is on the verge of clinching her fourth World Cup season title to cap a remarkable career. She'll retire after this weekend's races in Lake Placid, N.Y. Tom Weller \/ Getty Images<\/span>
Get ready. Here it comes. Maybe the rarest thing in sports these days \u2014 the epic mic drop.
Assuming she can collect 3 more points in the season\u2019s final weekend, Jessie Diggins is going out on top after 15 seasons with another crystal globe as the world\u2019s best overall cross-country skier.
She\u2019s 34. She\u2019s the best skier in the world. She\u2019s probably the best version of her competitive self she\u2019s ever been, which is saying something, given she has won three season-long overall titles before, including the last two.
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And she\u2019s done. Or will be, as she\u2019s retiring at the end of the World Cup finals, after three more races this weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y. She leads the World Cup standings by 342 points over Sweden\u2019s Moa Ilar. The most points possible over the weekend are 345, leaving Diggins in position to clinch as soon as Friday\u2019s first race, the 10-kilometer. She\u2019ll try to secure the title while simultaneously heading into the pain cave one last time and taking it all in.
Then again, that\u2019s what she has been doing all year on this relentless march to the final finish line. No second thoughts. No regrets. Just Diggins doing what Diggins does: Sprinkle glitter on the cheeks, head to the start line, go to the limit, maybe climb a podium when the day is done, and then do it all over again, sometimes the next day, sometimes the next week in some other far-flung location.
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of coming to a close at the right time, and it feels really peaceful,\u201d Diggins said during an interview this week from her home near Boston. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve left anything on the table. I don\u2019t feel like there\u2019s any boxes left unchecked. I\u2019m just sort of like, no, this was a nice victory lap of a year where I got to just enjoy all these venues one last time and just really soak up the experience of being with all these people that I love.\u201d
The thing is, most victory laps happen after the last victory has taken place, when there are no more victories to be had. Diggins has won plenty, and she is about to wrap up arguably the biggest prize of all.
She won the prestigious Tour de Ski in January. She won races in Trondheim, Norway, and Toblach, Italy. She landed on the podium eight other times on the World Cup circuit. At the Olympics, she crashed and injured her ribs in the first race, then came back and won the bronze medal<\/a> just days later in the 10-kilometer skate.
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Even though she finished third that day, the race will undoubtedly go down as one of her signature performances. In the last 100 meters, when she was grinding out a medal by just 3.3 seconds, it would have been far more effective for her to stand up and use her poles, but she couldn\u2019t stand up with the pain stabbing through her midsection. Still, she set aside the pain and found a way as her upper body collapsed toward one side. There was a primal scream as she crossed the finish line and crumbled into the snow, which was hard to listen to.
And yet, Diggins said none of those wins and podium appearances have anything to do with what made this last journey through the circus of elite cross-country skiing so special for her.
At the Olympics, she had so much family and so many friends there, people who couldn\u2019t make the trip to South Korea (in 2018) or Beijing (in 2022) for those Games. That was pretty great.
But also, all season, during races and as she trekked across the snow from the finish area at the end of the day, she kept hearing from fans about how much she had meant to them. They loved the way she raced, and they loved how she had shown up \u2014 going public about her ongoing struggles with disordered eating, her advocacy for better climate change policy, the way she puts glitter on the cheeks of really any racer who asks for it, the way she smiles on the start line and then leaves everything on the snow.
\u201cIn so many different countries, after the race,\u201d she said, \u201cyou kind of walk back up towards the truck, and often there\u2019ll be, like, a section along the fence where fans can ask for autographs, for pictures. And the interactions with people, where they have told me what I\u2019ve meant to them and how I\u2019ve \u2026 helped them through really hard times, either with mental health or physical challenges \u2014 a lot of them had me sign their gloves. They\u2019ve gotten my special Jessie gloves. Or they had brought a copy of my book. Or they came out with glittery signs that said, \u2018Thank you, Jessie\u2019 in English even though we\u2019re in Finland.\u201d
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In Lahti, Finland, earlier this month, teenage girls chased her through the woods with their signs. In Oslo, Norway, last weekend, fans swarmed her to say goodbye.
All that is everything to Diggins. At some point, she\u2019s not sure when, winning stopped being the goal but rather a means to an end \u2014 to share her story and what is important to her and show people they can do hard things, too.
Maybe, most importantly, she wanted to leave U.S. cross-country skiing in a better place than where she found it. There\u2019s no doubt she has done that. Ben Ogden, one of her training partners and someone who has looked up to her as a role model since he was a young teenager, has emerged as a rising star. Diggins helped make him believe he could compete with the best skiers in the world.
Ogden won two silver medals at the Olympics this year<\/a>, the first Olympic hardware in men\u2019s cross-country for the U.S. in 50 years. He teamed up with Gus Schumacher<\/a> to take the second one just days after the first.
\u201cYou can tell that they think deeply, like, \u2018How can I help make the team better?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s something that I put enormous value on.\u201d
None of that happens by accident, she said. She long ago figured out it was the furthest thing from a burden.
\u201cPeople have to intentionally put focus on being a good teammate and putting energy into the team,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it really comes back.\u201d
For Diggins, it always has. She\u2019s not going to race anymore, but she will be around occasionally, she said. Hopefully, for the sake of the team, that energy and ethos will get passed on from one generation to the next.
There\u2019s no better mic drop than that. Is there?
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
Matthew Futterman<\/a><\/strong> is an award-winning, veteran sports journalist and the author of the forthcoming book, “The Cruelest Game: Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis,” to be published by Doubleday in 2026. He has written two other books, \u201cRunning to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed\u201d and \u201cPlayers: How Sports Became a Business.\u201d Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer.<\/span> Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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OlympicsJessie Diggins is on the verge of clinching her fourth World Cup season title to cap a remarkable career. She'll retire after this weekend's races in Lake Placid, N.Y. Tom Weller \/ Getty ImagesGet ready. Here it comes. Maybe the rarest thing in sports these days \u2014 the epic mic drop.Assuming she can collect 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}