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Athletes are often superstitious, and adhere to traditions and rituals they believe help them over the line, and Jessie Diggins is no different. Her trademark face paint makes her unmistakable on the track, but Olympic success - and the increased attention that comes with it - has led her to open up about the body image problems she’s battled with throughout her career. She’s not just an inspirational athlete, but an inspiring figure to the next generation of female skiers who are battling with issues off piste, as well as on. 

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Mush! 

Jessie was born in 1991 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and like our other Minnesotan winter Secret Superhero, Lindsey Vonn, her first experiences of skiing were in her father’s backpack. Jessie would grab her father’s hair and yell “mush!”, but before long she had abandoned the reins, and was traveling under her own power by the age of four. She began skiing competitively when she was 11, and quickly established herself as a prodigious talent, winning three state titles while competing for Stillwater High School and earning a scholarship to Northern Michigan University. She chose to accept a position on the US Ski Team’s national junior program instead, and won nine junior titles in short order, before joining the senior team in 2011. 

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If there was any doubt about her potential it swiftly evaporated when, in 2013, she won gold at the FIS Nordic World World Championships in the Team Sprint event, alongside Kikkan Randall, becoming the first female American world champions in the event. The pair did not race together at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, and although Diggins did creditably well in the individual events, placing 8th out of 61 competitors in the 15km skiathlon, the cross-country skiing at the 2014 Olympics ended in the usual way, with all 36 medals in the 12 events going to European skiers. The US had not medalled in any events since 1976, when Bill Koch had taken a silver medal in the 30km event.  

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Here comes Diggins! 

All this was set to change, in the most spectacular fashion, four years later in Pyeongchang. Jessie was paired once again with Kikkan Randall, who she had won that rare World Championship medal with five years earlier, and once again the pair defined expectations. Winning a medal would have been remarkable enough, but as Diggins entered the final stages in a leading group of three, she clearly had no interest in winning bronze. In a remarkable finish she accelerated past her Swedish and Norwegian rivals to pip the Swede on the line by just 0.19 seconds, in one of the most thrilling conclusions of the Games, prompting NBC’s announcer Chad Selmela’s infamous call, screaming “Here comes Diggins! Here comes Diggins!” as she pulled up on her rival in the final stretch. 

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The victory - the first ever Olympic gold for an American in a cross-country skiing event - catapulted Diggins from relative obscurity to national attention, something which was cemented by her iconic appearance. As always she was resplendent in glittery face paint, a tradition that she had been following for many years; as she explained in a 2016 blogpost - “Putting on glitter before my race is a salute to the little girl who just wants to “go super speed!!!”. It’s a promise to myself that I will race my absolute hardest that day. It’s a ritual that gets me in the right mindset to get out of the start gate and give it everything I have. It’s harmless, doesn’t negatively impact anyone, but to me it’s a huge part of my race morning. To my team, it’s become a habit of mine that everyone is used to. I glitter up anyone who comes to the door asking, and  whomever I’m rooming with gets a big swipe on each cheek.” Kikkan Randall had also been thoroughly glittered on race day, and the pair’s sparkly celebrations certainly helped to bring national attention to a sport that Americans traditionally ignore. 

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Lifting others up

That newfound attention put Diggins in a difficult position, one which was best illustrated by a call to pose naked in 2018’s edition of ESPN’s Body Issue. During the interview that accompanied the photoshoot, Jessie began to allude to body image issues that had troubled her throughout her career, describing how she had always lacked confidence about her appearance because of her muscle-bound physique, before saying “I finally learned that I have to celebrate my body for what it does, not what it looks like”. 

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Soon after, she posted another article on her blog, in which she described her long battle with eating disorders, a subject she had previously kept secret from all but close family. Keenly aware of her newfound celebrity status and the increased responsibility that came with it, Jessie became an ambassador for The Emily Program, who had supported her through her own eating disorders earlier in her career. As a committed advocate for The Emily Program’s work, and the need for specialized support - both nutritional and psychological - for young girls in athletics training programs, Jessie has managed to raise awareness of these issues while also providing a strong and successful role model for the next generation of female athletes. She’s also become a committed advocate for climate change awareness, working closely with the Protect Our Winters project to campaign for better environmental outcomes and highlight the threat posed by climate change to winter sports. 

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On top of all this, she’s still competing at the highest levels, and still demonstrating remarkable tenacity in the face of adversity. She was stricken with food poisoning just 30 hours before the start of the 30km event at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, but recovered sufficiently to claim a silver medal - the first individual cross-country medal ever won by an American woman - and she also picked up a bronze in the individual sprint for good measure. Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising for this glittering Secret Superhero, who has overcome tremendous challenges to repeatedly deliver clutch performances on the highest stage that weren’t just clutch, but also sparkly. 

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