Photo by Mario Buehner/GEPA Zuma Press
olympic gold medal–winning Nordic skier Jessie Diggins
Jessie Diggins
At the beginning of the Nordic skiing season, Minnesota native Jessie Diggins didn’t know if there would even be a World Cup in 2021, so she kept her focus on performing to the top of her ability in each race. That strategy paid off in March when she sprinted across the finish line in Engadin, Switzerland, and collapsed to the snow. She was the first American woman to win her sport’s most prestigious prize—the overall World Cup title.
“The overall World Cup globe is the biggest thing I could ever possibly achieve,” Diggins said from Engadin. “I think it’s really cool to do it in a year that’s been really challenging.”
Barely a year earlier, officials made the wrenching decision to pull the plug on what was to be the first World Cup event to take place in the United States in decades. Diggins had lobbied for the event, to have been held at Theodore Wirth Park, for years. The day the sprints were to begin, on a sunny Tuesday when the gravity of the pandemic was just beginning to sink in, Diggins and supporters skied the course, which was already staged for the event with grandstand and flags lining the finish. Many brushed away tears, but Diggins posed for photos with kids on the awards stand and kept smiling.
Photos by Ed Jones/AFP Getty Images
Olympic swimmer Regan Smith
Regan Smith
“Maybe that is what separates world-class athletes from the rest of us,” posits Rachel Blount, who covers Minnesota’s Olympic athletes and college sports for the Star Tribune. “Having the ability to say, OK, that sucks—let’s move on with it.”
Diggins isn’t the only elite athlete who has excelled during a year that many of us have wanted to forget. Forced time off from the rigors of year-round training and a chance to reset mentally have allowed many world-class athletes to thrive.
Take swimmer Regan Smith, from Lakeville, and runner Meghan Peyton, from St. Paul, who say they benefited from cancelled competitions that led to more relaxed training schedules than they ever would have allowed themselves in normal times.
Both were training for the 2020 Olympic Trials until the Games were put on hold, leaving them with something they’d never contemplated: empty competition schedules.
“After the Olympics were postponed, I had a few moments throughout the summer when I thought, ‘Why am I going to practice?’” Smith says. “It was hard to stay focused and keep my head down without knowing what I was training for. There were a couple of moments when I didn’t work as hard as I think I could have.”
By the time she found herself on the starting blocks again at her first real meet in eight months, in early November, she started second-guessing herself.
Photo by Meghan Peyton
runner Meghan Peyton
Meghan Peyton
“It was super weird, that first meet back,” she remembers. “I thought, ‘I don’t even remember how to do this.’ I felt very unsure of myself.”
But by her fifth event of the meet, she got back into her routine. And since then, she says, she’s started to reap the benefits of that summer break.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve just been able to be a kid,” she says. “I love swimming so much, but having the chance during the summer to hang out on the boat and take the dogs for a walk—I think I needed that break mentally.”
She’s also stronger from forced time out of the pool that she devoted to strength training. And all of that worked: At a local invitational at the University of Minnesota in mid-March, she broke the American record in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 49.16 seconds.
Photo by Mario Buehner/GEPA Zuma Press
Olympic swimmer Regan Smith
Peyton is beginning to see the payoffs as well. At a recent track workout, her coach saw the difference in her stride, noting her improved running economy and range of motion. Peyton credits that to the six weeks she took off to completely heal a hamstring injury when the pandemic put a halt to her Olympic Trials training.
“There was no rush to get ready for something else,” she says. “I could finally take the time and relax and take care of this properly.”
There have been some unexpected physical benefits as well. Jessie Diggins didn’t get her usual winter cold this year, which she attributes to masking. Peyton noted the lack of flu. Others have said that they’ve never slept better.
“They have all said, more than ever, you have to focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t,” the Star Tribune’s Blount notes of most athletes she’s spoken with about the past year. “It’s never been more important. Whatever the pandemic hands you, you can’t control that, and you can’t waste mental time worrying about it.”
Mayo Clinic sports psychologist Max Trenerry says he’d bet his three-shot latte that athletes who are able to do that are dialed in to their beliefs and values.
“They probably have a lot of strongly held beliefs that they connect with really specific behaviors,” he says. “While they might experience some fear, anxiety, and doubts, I would bet that for these elite athletes, it was possible for them to put all that in the background while they stayed connected to what they believe in.”
As cross-country and track coach at Augsburg, Peyton has encouraged her athletes to embrace the idea that they can compete at high levels even when things aren’t perfect. For collegiate runners, that has meant facing months of practice without competition followed by a spring season of both track and cross-country.
“We’ve been practicing that resiliency of being able to perform at a high level even if you have to wear a mask or do things you don’t want to,” Peyton says. “Continuing to train together even if we don’t have the competitions is something that brings each of them a lot of joy. And when we do get the opportunity to race, having gratitude for that opportunity.”
At the team’s four indoor track meets, some set personal records and others were close, she says. And nobody fared worse.
Other stellar pandemic efforts from Minnesota athletes include University of Minnesota runner Bethany Hasz’s second-place finish in the NCAA indoor track championship 5K, followed by an eighth-place finish in the NCAA cross-country championship just three days later. And gymnasts Shane Wiskus and Suni Lee “crushed” the recent Winter Cup, Blount says, with Wiskus earning a gold in floor, in addition to two silver and two bronze medals, and Lee leaving with a gold in uneven bars and silver in balance beam.
These athletes don’t plan on forgetting this year. Instead, they will implement what they’ve learned. Smith says she will no longer hesitate to spend time with friends.
“In my mind, I always thought I had a good balance between swimming and social,” she says. But the pandemic made her realize she had over-prioritized swimming. “It’s important to have some fun occasionally. Before all of this, it was literally eating, sleeping, swimming, and Netflix.”
