Jessie Diggins captured the hearts of America last February when she and her teammate won Olympic gold for Team USA at the winter games in South Korea.
It was a moment that forever etched her into history, and it was a moment that almost wasn't.
Nearly a decade earlier, Diggins was facing a fight far greater than that of a cross country ski race.
She was facing a fight against an eating disorder.
“I think it does hit a lot of athletes, especially in endurance sports," Diggins said. "It started out innocently in that I wanted to be lean for my sport and morphed into full on, not just disordered eating, but it was controlling my life."
She was 18 years old at the time, a senior in high school.
“It was easy to cling to that number on a scale because that was one of the only things you could sort of measure, and I had this misguided idea, that was what was going to be what would make me fast,” Diggins recalled.
Diggins was putting herself in harm’s way to get better at something she wouldn't even be able to do if she kept putting herself in harm’s way.
And it was her parents who finally were able to break her cycle.
“My parents said, 'You know, you don't look happy anymore, and you don't seem like yourself,” she said.
Getting to the "why" led Jessie to treatment at The Emily Program, where she found her way to recovery. And that led her to be able to get back on track to be who America would come to love in this past Winter Olympics.
But we didn't know any of this history when she won gold, and that was because Diggins didn't want this story to define her story.
“I don't want that to be the only thing I'm ever known for. I didn't want that to be the overarching theme of my career," she said. "But the more I thought about it the more I thought, I owe the younger version of myself this story.”
This past summer she paid that debt to her younger self when she bared all of her strong body in the ESPN body issue, and coupled it with her blog post about beating that eating disorder.
“The response from the community was overwhelming," she said. "It was really emotional at times, because I heard from these young girls who reminded me of me."
And she wanted all of them to hear her story so they could see a champion who didn't always win. So they could hear a story that wasn't also just about loss, but the combination of wins and losses, of fear and anxiety and near misses and losing your way, only to find a golden way out.
If you would like to hear Jessie Diggins tell her story, she will be speaking this Saturday, Nov. 3, on behalf of The Emily Program.
The event is free and will be held at 5354 Parkdale Drive, St. Louis Park, Minnesota at 2:30 p.m.