Jessie Diggins fans flock to Italy to cheer her on one last time at the Olympics

TESERO, Italy - It seemed like a sure thing that I would see Afton’s own Jessie Diggins in person after traveling to Italy for the Milan Cortina Olympics, but I didn’t expect it to happen at a grocery store. Yet there she was, lingering near the dairy cooler, her infectiously positive smile radiating down an aisle filled with Nordic ski fans who had just seen her compete on the first day of the Olympics in the women’s 20-kilometer skiathlon at the nearby Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium.

Seeing her face in the crowd, it took a beat for my brain to register that her unblinking eyes were in fact a laminated “Jessie Head” on a stick poking out of someone else’s backpack. Alas, the athletes don’t get their bananas with us mere mortals during the Games.

No, this was just a sign worn by another person who, like me, was drawn to the stunning mountains of northern Italy to cheer on Diggins in what the 34-year-old has said will be her last Olympics. Her final race at the Milan Cortina Games will be the women’s 50km mass start classic on Sunday, Feb. 22.

The Tesero grocery store moment became one of many sightings of Jessie heads, Jessie posters and fan-worn Jessie bibs in the restaurants and narrow streets of this remote village in South Tyrol. Some fans showed their allegiance by dusting their cheeks with glitter, copying Diggins’ race-day look.

Even after watching her star rise over the years as she garnered World Cup and Olympic medals along with a reputation for bold expressions of joy, I didn’t fully appreciate Diggins’ fandom until I saw it at the Olympics. It wasn’t just Americans out there cheering her on. And it wasn’t just for skiing that they cheered.

“I love everything about her,” Jenny Linder told me on the shuttle bus from the Tesero ski stadium. “She’s inspiring. She’s kind. She’s generous. She takes the time for anybody and she’s just true to herself.”

Linder wore an American flag as a cape, and had glitter on her cheeks, and looked like some of the other American fans I had seen. Except she was from Switzerland. She carried a packet of glitter to the race course and dabbed up people’s cheeks, including, she said, four elderly Norwegian women.

“We couldn’t miss this,” she said.

So many people from other countries felt the same way that it left Sarah O’Connor reeling with emotion. The Minneapolis woman traveled to Italy with Diggins’ family — the skier’s aunt is a close friend — and O’Connor wore a Jessie bib and one of the custom-made Stormy Kromer hats that the Diggins family and their close friends wore at the Olympics.

“The best thing is seeing the outpouring of love from all around the world,” O’Connor said. “We’re wearing these hats and these pinnies and people come up to us and say, ‘We love Jessie, we love Jessie! One more year. Keep skiing!’”

Then there were the young girls who came to cheer their idol. From New England to New Zealand, they wore glitter and ski gear and spoke of their own burgeoning careers in the sport.

Ten-year-old Bella Altadonna of Burlington, Vt., wore a headband Diggins and other skiers had autographed. She was on the course during Diggins’ bronze medal-winning race on Feb. 12 with her parents Matt Altadonna and Maya Davis, a family of Nordic superfans. They carried a laminated poster of Jessie’s face, a “Jessie Head,” the same one they had at the Minneapolis World Cup event in 2024 and other races elsewhere.

The happy buzz among Diggins fans in Tesero reminded me of the raucous scene at that Minneapolis World Cup in 2024, when the usually obscure sport of Nordic skiing found a mass audience in Minnesota as thousands of fans stood in Theodore Wirth Park and bellowed for Team USA. It was Diggins’ first World Cup race on home soil, one she had lobbied for.

When Diggins retires, she’ll count among her many distinctions her status as the only American to ever receive the Holmenkollen Medal, Norway’s highest honor in skiing. In Italy in January, the managers of the ski course at Toblach named a bridge after her, permanently memorializing her run of victories at the World Cup course she’s called her favorite.

“I talked to a Norwegian woman and she said, ‘I love Minnesota, I love Jessie, she’s just such a lovely beautiful human,’” said Kelly Martinson of St. Paul. “And you know exactly what she’s saying when she says that.”

Martinson and her husband, Kirk, journeyed from Minnesota with a group of friends to cheer on Diggins. Kirk stood in the snow along the course waving a large Minnesota flag. The couple once lived in Germany, but they’ve felt a different vibe at the Olympics as attitudes toward the U.S. shift.

At a biathlon event, the Martinsons found themselves near a group of Germans who wondered what their flag represented. When they learned it was for a U.S. state, they recoiled. Kirk, a German professor, said he went into diplomatic mode to make connections with the German group. The experience left the Martinsons grateful for Diggins’ transcendent ability to connect with athletes and fans across the map.