Jessie Diggins in the Women's Sprint Quarterfinals at the Loppet Cup World Cup near her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Lorie Shaull // Flickr

The thing about Minnesota native Jessie Diggins is that she doesn’t do quiet goodbyes. At 34 years old, competing in what she’s announced will be her final season on the World Cup circuit, Diggins is doing what she’s always done: racing with the kind of intensity that leaves competitors searching for explanations.

In her opening races of the 2025-26 season, she delivered her best-ever 10 km classic finish in Ruka, Finland, then won the 20 km skiathlon in Trondheim—her first victory at that Norwegian venue in her entire career.

“Success requires the emotional balance of a committed heart,” she said to U.S. Ski & Snowboard, explaining her philosophy. “When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution. The undecided heart searches for an escape. A committed heart does not wait for conditions to be exactly right.”
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It’s the kind of thing that sounds almost clichéd until you watch her ski. Then it becomes obvious: this is someone who has spent nearly two decades at the highest level of an unforgiving sport, refusing to accept anything less than total commitment.

The Weight of History

Ask anyone involved in American cross-country skiing what Jessie Diggins means to the sport, and you’ll get different answers depending on when they entered her orbit. Some remember her as the breakthrough—the young skier who made nationals relevant, who proved Americans could compete with the Scandinavian and Nordic powerhouses who have dominated the sport for generations.

Others remember the moment she made history.

In 2018, at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Diggins and teammate Kikkan Randall won the team sprint in classic technique. It was Team USA’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing. For a nation that had never truly contended in this discipline, it was seismic.

Since then, the accolades have accumulated with an almost relentless consistency. Three Olympic medals. Seven World Championship medals. Thirty World Cup victories. Eighty World Cup podiums.

Two Tour de Ski overall titles. Three overall FIS Crystal Globes—a record for overall titles that ties her with some of the sport’s greatest names, and makes her the only non-European to ever win one.

She’s the most decorated American cross-country skier in history. Full stop.

A Different Kind of Excellence

What’s perhaps more striking than the medals and victories is what she represents: a skier who succeeded not by following the traditional Nordic pathway, but by building something different. She’s an American who made Americans believe they could compete with Scandinavia’s centuries-old skiing tradition.

Her teammates speak about her with a particular reverence. She’s a mentor to younger skiers, someone who has thought deeply about what it means to represent the United States in a sport where the nation has historically been an afterthought. That responsibility seems to sit comfortably on her shoulders—not as a burden, but as something that drives her forward.

In the 2025 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim earlier this year, before the World Cup season began, Diggins partnered with Julia Kern to capture silver in the team sprint.

The Final Lap

When Diggins announced she would retire at the end of this season, it reframed everything about 2025-26. Suddenly, every race carries different weight. Every podium finish isn’t just a step toward another championship—it’s a moment to savor before it ends.

The season will conclude at the World Cup Finals in Lake Placid in March 2026, coming after her final Olympic campaign at Milano-Cortina in February. It’s a fitting way to close a career: one more Olympics, then home to the United States for a final World Cup race on American soil.

In her opening weeks, Diggins has shown no signs of easing into retirement. She’s racing the same way she always has: with everything she has. That committed heart she talks about isn’t metaphorical for her. It’s how she’s built a career that rewrote what’s possible for American skiers.

The rest of the season will tell us whether there’s one more championship in her, one more Crystal Globe to add to her collection. But even if the results don’t come the way she hopes, Diggins has already left an indelible mark on her sport—proof that with enough commitment, enough heart, and enough willingness to push into that “pain cave,” an American skier can stand at the very top of the world.