Jessie Diggins Secures 23/24 Season Overall Crystal Globe & Long Distance Small Crystal Globe After Victory in 20km Race in the Cross Country World Cup Finals at Falun, Sweden

U.S. cross country skier Jessie Diggins secured the 23/24 Season Cross-Country Overall Crystal Globe as well as the Long Distance Crystal Globe after winning the Women’s 20km Mass Start in Falun, Sweden, on Sunday, March 17. It is the second time Diggins has won the Big Crystal Globe, after becoming the first non-European woman to claim the Overall Title in the 20/21 season. 32-year-old Diggins finished the season with a total of 2,746 points, 175 points ahead of Sweden’s Linn Svahn. Svahn claimed this season’s Small Crystal Globe for the Sprint events. The only other American to have won a cross country Overall Crystal Globe was William Koch, who won in the Men’s discipline in the 81/82 season.

Sporting her signature sparkles on her cheeks, Diggins ran a tactically flawless race, winning both sprint sections, awarding her 15 points each for a total of 30 bonus points for the race. She was leading the pack for the majority of the race, with a big group of roughly 25 skiers leading the race up until the last 2.5km, when Diggins broke away with Norwegians Heidi Weng and Anne Kjersti Kalvaa. The trio battled it out all the way to the finish line, but it was Diggins who crossed the finish first, 0.9 seconds ahead of Weng and X seconds ahead of Kalvaa.

”I just wanted to leave it all out there because I know that when I do that, I can walk away proud. If I’m first, if I’m last, it doesn’t matter, if I give it everything I have then I’m going to be proud of what I put out there.”
— Jessie Diggins

Diggins has been having a tough start to the season, admitting openly to her struggles with eating disorders, which she has battling since she was a teenager. “It was really emotional,” said Diggins, fighting back tears, “It’s been a hard year and today my only goal was to go out there and have the most fun, and I really did.”

Teammates Rosie Brennan and Novie McCabe finished the 20km race in 10th and 11th place while Sophia Laukli came 17th, Sydney Palmer-Leger came 23rd, and Haley Brewster 32nd. Julia Kern recorded a DNF.