January 04, 2014 (Val di Fiemme, Italy) – American Jessie Diggins delivered the goods today hammering to a career-best classic result in the women’s 5km CL placing 10th, the penultimate stage at the Tour de Ski in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Her efforts catapulted her to 11th in the overall standings. Teammate Liz Stephen, who finished 21st, sits 14th overall with the final gruelling stage on Sunday, up Alpe Cermis where Stephen had the second fastest time a year ago.

Norway’s Therese Johaug took a resounding victory for her first stage win at this year’s Tour besting teammate and Tour leader, Astrid Jacobsen, by 14.9s – Johaug is now just +23.8 second behind Jacobsen heading into Sunday’s final stage. In third was Finland’s Anne Kylloenen at 19.2 back as she led a trio of Finn’s into the top 5 with Kerttu Niskanen in 4th, and Krista Lahteenmaki 5th.

SkiTrax caught up with Diggins after her stellar day for her take on her excellent classic skiing at the site of her and Kikkan Randall’s (Anchorage) historic World Championships victory in the team sprint. Diggins’ previous best World Cup classic result was 18th in Estonia in 2012.

“The conditions were interesting as it was raining the whole day, and some of the field went on zeroes and some went on klister, myself included. The tracks were soaked and mostly hard and fairly fast, and I my Salomons were running great thanks to our crew – there were one or two spots where I had to herringbone (as did most of the field) but kick was awesome and so was the glide!

“I was really psyched on the race today because it was my best classic race on the World Cup by far, and a great confidence booster for me as classic skiing is still something I’m trying to figure out.

“I didn’t ask for splits out there today because I knew I had a pacing strategy and would be going as hard as I could, so I asked the coaches to yell out technique and encouragement, which definitely helped a lot!

“I’m excited for tomorrow’s climb, mostly because of the feeling you get once you’re standing at the top. It’s this rush of emotion when you realized that you just finished an impossibly, insanely hard climb at the end of a long series of races, and it was crazy hard but you did it,” commented the Afton, MN skier.

Full results here.
TdS Overall here.