Jessica Diggins suffered an early fall in Saturday's women's 20km skiathlon at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics when the tip of her ski disappeared in the slush during the classic portion. The unfortunate crash cost her valuable time and ultimately knocked her out of medal contention. However, the consequences extended beyond the result sheet.
Her fall caused a chain reaction that took down several other skiers, including Finland's Vilma Nissinen. But the 34-year-old Diggins paid a high price, suffering bruised ribs that later made it hard for her to breathe during the race and the sprint events that followed on Tuesday.
She failed to advance from the women's sprint classic quarterfinals, finishing fourth in her heat with a time of 3 minutes, 59.33 seconds. Because she did not place in the top two of her heat or record a fast enough time to qualify as a "lucky loser," her sprint event ended in the quarterfinal round.
An injury update emerged Monday after sprint qualifying. NBC Olympics reporter Nicole Auerbach revealed Diggins disclosed she bruised her ribs during Saturday's fall.
"It really hurts," Auerbach said Diggins told her after sprint qualifying. "She said she'll be OK but the bruised ribs make it hard to breathe."
Despite the injury, Diggins advanced to the sprint quarterfinals after posting a time of 3:46.67, about 10 seconds behind top qualifier Linn Svahn of Sweden, who finished in 3:36.21. Diggins placed 20th, with the top 30 skiers advancing to the next round.
Diggins, however, downplayed the crash's impact after the skiathlon, saying, "The crash wasn't that big of a deal to me. Yes, I did lose some time but that wasn't the bigger problem today, so I just kept focusing on, 'stay calm, work your way back and ski the best you can ski.'”
The three-time Olympic medalist faces a packed schedule in her final Winter Games. Diggins still has the women's 10km freestyle on Thursday, the 4x7.5km relay on Saturday, the team sprint on Feb. 18 and the 50km mass start classic on Feb. 22.