Jessie Diggins’ tear through the Tour de Ski continues, this time with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it third-place finish in the 10-kilometer classic pursuit Wednesday in Toblach, Italy.
Overall tour leader Diggins missed her third win of the event by less than a second, while overall world cup leader Rosie Brennan was not far behind her in fourth place. The result keeps the American duo 1-2 in the tour standings after five of eight races, and also together in the top three in the overall world cup standings.
Starting first as the tour leader, Diggins raced ahead early but fell on a downhill portion and joined a lead pack with Sweden’s Ebba Andersson, Russia’s Yulia Stupak and Brennan, with the foursome racing about 20 seconds ahead of the chase group at the 4.2K mark.
That group stayed together until the final quarter of the race, when they dropped Brennan.
After combing through the snow covered pine trees in northern Italy, Stupak won a sprint to the finish, crossing the line at 29:24.7. Andersson was just .7 of a second behind her, and Diggins was .1 of a second behind Andersson. Brennan coasted into fourth just over 17 seconds behind Stupak.
With the win Diggins has now reached the podium in all five Tour de Ski races so far, with two of them being wins. Diggins, who in 2018 partnered with Kikkan Randall to win Team USA’s first Olympic gold medal in the sport, is also the only American to have finished the Tour de Ski on the podium, having taken third in 2018.
Brennan also remains in contention as the tour moves to Val di Fiemme, Italy, this weekend for the final three races. She’s finished among the top-six in all five races so far and on the podium twice.
Through five races, Diggins maintains a 22-second lead over Brennan in the overall tour standings, while Stupak is third 58 seconds behind Diggins.
Brennan, meanwhile, maintains her lead in the overall and distance world cup standings, with Diggins third in both.
The Tour de Ski wraps up this weekend in Val di Fiemme with classic mass starts Friday and classic sprints Saturday followed by freestyle mass start races Sunday.
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