Jessie Diggins, America’s most-decorated cross-country skier ever, is plenty motivated to shine at the Milano Cortina Olympics—her fourth and final Games. Sure, there’s the matter of Diggins attempting to win the first individual Olympic gold medal for the United States, ever, in her sport. But just as important as the ultimate prize, Diggins says, is her quest to share her last Olympic experience with friends, family, and fans. This support system was absent four years ago in Beijing, where she won individual silver and bronze medals, due to COVID restrictions.
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Win or lose, she wants to give them a thrill. “That’s why I’m here, training my brains out,” Diggins, 34, tells TIME during a conversation from Park City, Utah, in October. “It’s the challenge of, ‘How deep into the pain cave can I go?’”
Pretty deep, it turns out. Diggins often refers to the lengths she’ll push her body and mind as the pain cave, and with that mentality she has racked up her fair share of victories. She owns three career overall crystal globes (2021, 2024, 2025) as the best overall women’s cross-country skier in the world, and in January she won her third overall title in the Tour de Ski, the most prestigious multistage race in her sport. This season, she once again leads the world standings. She also made history in 2023, when she won America’s first individual gold medal at a world championships, taking the 10-km freestyle title.
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In Milano Cortina, Diggins—who won Team USA’s first-ever cross-country Olympic gold in 2018, in the team sprint freestyle competition with Kikkan Randall—will compete in both sprint and distance races. The call of that victory in South Korea, by NBC’s Chad Salmela, describing Diggins’ furious comeback sprint to the finish—”Here comes Diggins! Here comes Diggins! … Yes! Yes! Yes! … Gold!”—provided an indelible moment of those…
