Americans Kikkan Randall, Jessie Diggins make history with cross country gold

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Olympic spoiler alerts for Day 12: Vonn gets emotional, U.S. cross country makes history SportsPulse: The U.S. shocked the pundits by making history in the women's cross-country. And Lindsey Vonn looked to chase down another medal. SPOILERS AHEAD.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – The U.S. women’s breakthrough in cross country has been two decades in the making, through years where they showed up at the Olympics with little chance to beat the Europeans, through periods in which it was almost impossible to find talent that could trudge it out on the international stage and through dozens of World Cup events where Kikkan Randall was sometimes the only member of her gender on the team.

And so it was that in the final race of her fifth Olympics – the one she came back for after the birth of her son Breck – all the possibilities the 35-year-old Randall saw building over the last half-dozen years were suddenly about to be realized. With her third and final lap in the team sprint complete and her 26-year-old teammate Jessie Diggins breaking away with skiers from Sweden and Norway to fight it out for the final 1.25 kilometers, the long-awaited first U.S. medal in women’s cross country was all but certain.

“When I started, I don’t know if we were even fielding a relay in the Olympics,” Randall said. “We were excited if we got a top 30.”

So whatever happened with Diggins in those final, grueling 160 or so seconds was going to be validation enough for how U.S. women’s cross country had transformed itself from essentially a start-up program to a team that had been competing regularly at the highest levels for the past handful of years.

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But Diggins, a native of Afton, Minn., had no intention of settling for any medal. She wanted gold.

“I don’t know what I was thinking except, ‘go, go ,go,’ because you have to dig really deep,” Diggins said.

Tucking in just behind Sweden’s Stina Nilsson and Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla for the course's final downhill stretch, Diggins ignored the burning in her legs and unleashed a burst of speed with about 100 yards to go. She went inside to pass the Norwegian, then swung to the outside to take a run at Nilsson.

“I was standing in the finish and we were screaming at the top of our lungs,” Randall said. “It was really hard to tell who was going to be ahead.”

As Diggins surged ahead of Nilsson a few strides before the line, she raised her arms in the air and collapsed to the ground. Randall’s head turned to the scoreboard to make sure. And when it flashed that the U.S. had won the gold by a mere 0.19 seconds, Randall ran out and jumped on top of her.

“Oh my gosh, did we just win the Olympics?” Diggins said.

Indeed, they did. And for Randall, it couldn’t have been more of a storybook finish to her Olympic career.

Going back to Salt Lake City in 2002, she had competed in 17 Olympic events without a medal. She was supposed to win one in Sochi, but it didn’t happen. Given what the U.S. team had done in World Cups this year with five podium finishes and three victories, they came to Pyeongchang with even bigger expectations to break through.

But four races in, it still hadn’t happened, and Randall, who finished a disappointing 40th in the skiathlon to open these Olympics, wasn’t sure she’d even be picked to team up with Diggins in the sprint. It wasn’t just a sentimental decision, however, to put her on the snow one last time. Given what the skiers faced with the final hill on this course – a beastly climb that was going to decide the race one way or the other – nobody was better-suited to navigate it than Randall.

“The first time I saw Kikkan ski, she was 14 years old,” said USA Ski and Snowboard chief of sport Luke Bodensteiner. “At times, it felt like it’s either going to happen now or we could (wait) a long, long time to see this.”

As much as the U.S. has developed its cross-country program with a raft of younger skiers waiting in the wings, it would have been a massive disappointment to leave here without a medal. Diggins, in fact, had finished fifth in the skiathlon, sixth in the sprint and fifth in the 10K, sniffing around the podium but unable to finish.

And boy, did she ever, perfectly blending strategy and finishing speed, the latter of which has been the hallmark of her career.

“I was confident in my downhill and I knew I’d be able to make up some speed and come into the final corner pretty hot if I was able to draft them,” Diggins said of the two competitors she tracked going up that final hill. “I was in a lot of pain for sure, but when your team is counting on you, you have to give it everything you have.”

Said Bodenstiner: “She’s pretty reliable there. She’s so tenacious. She has this extra gear that when the chips are down, she finds it. She will not let go.”

And as the U.S. team celebrated its historic night, even its competitors couldn’t help but be happy for Diggins and Randall. For this sport that has just a handful of elite teams who beat each other up racing across continents, it was a moment whose time had come.

“They are so worth this gold medal,” said Charlotte Kalla, the other member of the Swedish team.

And whether or not the U.S. cross-country program builds on this win or it’s a fleeting moment in time, it’s history that Randall saw through to the end. From where she started to tackling her teammate at the finish line of her final Olympic race, she leaves the stage with the circle complete and a gold medal around her neck.

“It’s been a really amazing journey for me through five Olympics, but it really got fun about six years ago when this women’s team formed and the level has been rising and rising and rising,” Randall said. “We talked about, if we won a medal at the Olympics it was truly going to be a team medal whether you were on the snow that day or not. It’s been in the works for a long time and it’s amazing to finally make it happen.”