Jessie Diggins, Julie Kern Race To Second In Dresden Cross-Country Team Sprint

Jessie Diggins competes during the women's 10 km free mass at the FIS Cross-Country World Cup on Jan. 9, 2021 in Val Di Fiemme, Italy.

Here comes Jessie Diggins and Julia Kern, rounding into form less than 50 days out from the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.
The American duo held off a Slovenia to finish second in the freestyle team sprint as the weekend’s cross-country skiing world cup wrapped up Sunday in Dresden, Germany.
For Diggins, it was her best finish in the team event since 2018, when she partnered with Kikkan Randall to win the United States’ first Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing. For Kern, it marked her first world cup podium in the event and second overall.
The Americans finished 1.11 seconds back of Sweden’s Jonna Sundling and Maja Dahlqvist, who claimed second and first in Saturday’s individual freestyle sprint. Slovenia’s Eva Urevc and Anamarija Lampic finished third, just .1 behind the U.S. team.
In the men’s race, the U.S. men’s team of Kevin Bolger and JC Schoonmaker was ninth, coming in 11.36 behind the winners from Norway.
Dahlqvist continued her dominance in the individual sprint on Saturday, claiming her fifth win in a row, a streak dating back to last season. Hannah Halvorsen and Diggins were seventh and eighth, just missing the six-woman final. The result was a career-best for Halvorsen.
Schoonmaker was ninth in the men’s individual competition Saturday. It was the 21-year-old’s second top-10 finish in a world cup race, with the first coming last month in Finland.
The cross-country skiing world cup takes a holiday break next weekend before picking back up on Dec. 28 in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, for the start of the Tour de Ski. Diggins made history earlier this year when she became the first American to win the esteemed multi-race competition.