US cross-country ski team makes history with nation's 1st gold medal in sport

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea - A team of two American women ended one of the longest droughts in U.S. Olympic sports on Wednesday.

Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won the women’s team sprint freestyle race at the Pyeongchang Games, outsprinting more heralded teams from Sweden and Norway to become the first Americans to win an Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing.

They are the first American cross-country skiers to medal at the Olympics since Bill Koch took home a silver in 1976.

“Hearing it out loud, it still doesn’t feel real,” Randall said. “It’s what I’ve been working on for 20 years and with this team for the last five years and, wow, it’s just so fun to put it together tonight, finally.”

The win was especially sweet for Diggins. She finished in the top six in each of her four Olympic events before the sprint relay, and missed a medal in the 10-kilometer freestyle last week by 3.3 seconds.

Then Wednesday, under the lights on a chilly but calm night at Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Center, Diggins came off the final hill in third place on this winding up-and-down track and took a massive risk - taking the widest of turns at nearly 30 mph, she momentarily drifted outside the track to create the space she needed to dart ahead of Maiken Falla of Norway.

In the final straightaway, Diggins chased down Stina Nilsson of Sweden and outstretched her at the finish to win by 0.19 seconds. Norway claimed the bronze.

Diggins collapsed in the snow, and soon Randall was piling on top of her.

“It feels unreal; I can’t believe it just happened,” Diggins said. “But we’ve been feeling so good these entire games, and just having it happen at a team event means so much more to me than any individual medal ever would.”

The team sprint is a sadistic event. It requires two skiers to take turns skiing three legs each of 1.25 kilometers. With two rounds of racing for the top 10 teams, that means six all-out sprints for each skier, with a little more than an hour to recover between the semifinals and the final. The Americans’ winning time - 15:56.47 - was a 26-second improvement on their semifinal effort.