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Sports

Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall Win Gold, Announcers Lose Their Shit

The pair won the women's team sprint freestyle at PyeongChang 2018, the first gold medal ever in cross country for the United States.
Screenshot via NBC Sports/Twitter

These are maybe the most embarrassing words I can write to start a story, but here goes: I once cross country skied to a yurt in Idaho, and it sucked ass. I was staying with a friend, and his parents wanted to go snow camping in a fancy way, so we went to their friend's yurt. As a fat kid, I can tell you that I was ready for none of the painstaking exercise that came with what must have been like a 0.5 mile trip to a squatty, fart-smelling cone in the woods.

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So—with my experience of falling down and complaining and sweating icicles into my oversized Mossimo sweatshirt—I've watched the cross country skiing event during the Olympics with a heightened appreciation of how much physical strength and effort it takes to attempt to glide up slippery hills on sticks. But, in case you need any other frame of reference for how hard it is, just listen to this bonkers call from the NBC announcers Steve Schlanger and Chad Salmela, as they usher the skiers to the finish line of the women's team sprint freestyle event:

Team USA won their first gold medal ever in cross-country skiing (aka, "The Devil's Sport"), and it was about as hard-earned as it could be. Jessie Diggins (aka Jess Diggs) was nearly two ski-lengths behind Swede Stina Nilsson in the final stretch—after passing through something called a klaebo-bakken (duh)—and things looked grim for the USA's chance of ever beating nordic countries at their cross-country skiing dominance.

But out of nowhere, with whatever glimmering, tiny patch of ATP left in her body, Diggins saw Nilsson getting fatigued and built up a stride. Diggins passed the line .19 seconds faster than Nilsson and took home the gold. Diggins and her teammate Kikkan Randall were the first Americans to medal in the event since Bill Koch's silver at the 1976 games.

"I just felt unstoppable, I am in the best shape of my life right now for sure," Diggins said. "That feeling of crossing the line and having Kikkan tackle me was the coolest thing ever."

Sure, but can Diggins beat a whiny fat kid in a Mossimo sweatshirt to a yurt in Idaho? The answer is: backwards and 12-times til Sunday.