Julia Kern ’19 came up short in her bid to be the first Dartmouth graduate or student to medal in Olympic cross-country skiing, finishing fifth in the women’s team sprint with her partner Jessie Diggins on February 18. Six seconds faster and the pair would have had a bronze.
But if the 28-year-old could have heard the cow bells and cheers at an Olympic Watch Party in her hometown of Richmond, Vermont, she would have thought that she and Diggins had won gold.
“It's amazing seeing how deep Julia can dig,” says Charlotte Ogden, who also watched her brother Ben win his second Olympic silver medal, with Gus Schumacher, in the men’s team sprint. “Watching Julia race, you can tell that she’s putting her heart and all of her effort into what she’s doing, which is really cool.”
“She skied her heart out,” adds Ed Hamel. “She’s got such power and grace when she skis.”
Kern, one of Dartmouth’s top medal prospects in the Milano Cortina games—her second Olympics—competed in both the individual and team sprint. In the individual sprint, Kern made the final of six women. This season, she had made a sprint final in only one prior race, the final World Cup before the Olympics.
Four days after the Olympic individual sprint, Kern kicked off the first leg of the 4 x 7.5-kilometer women’s relay. In the relay, the first two legs are in the classic technique, the final two legs in the freestyle or skate technique. After her 7.5km classic leg, Kern tagged Rosie Brennan ’11 just 13.8 seconds off the lead, and Brennan brought the team into sixth place. Novie McCabe skied the third leg, then tagged Diggins, who brought the U.S. team home in fifth place, tying the best Olympic relay finish in U.S. history.
“It was surfing snow,” Kern says of the wet conditions during the relay. “You just gotta ride the slush.”
It’s been a warm Olympics in Italy, and all the skiers have struggled in the soft snow. Diggins fell in the very first Olympic race (the skiathlon) after her ski tip buried into the slushy snow. And in the relay, Sweden’s Ebba Andersson famously fell twice, breaking her ski binding in the second somersaulting fall. The Swedish women still managed to finish the relay with a silver medal.
“The whole last month has been like this,” says Kern about the snow conditions. “We are unfortunately seeing more and more of these conditions, but also, snow can be different each day. We all stayed calm and collected, and I think that was the key to navigating it well."
Hopes were high for Kern and Diggins to win a medal in the team sprint (a freestyle race at this Olympics). They have won medals in the event at the past two world championships. But Sweden pulled away for an early lead, and Diggins could never break out of traffic. In her third and final handoff, Diggins tagged Kern in fifth place, but within one second of a podium place. It would be up to Kern to keep them there.
But in the final 1.5-kilometer lap, Switzerland, Germany, and Norway pulled away from Kern—with Sweden still far out in front. Kern crossed the line in fifth, 11.54 seconds from first place, and only 5.67 seconds from a medal. Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany claimed gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.
With two fifth places and a sixth, Kern has had her best Olympics to date. Her previous best was 18th in the individual sprint (a freestyle race) at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
“It was really cool to see Julia with Jessie [in today’s team sprint] because Jessie has inspired Julia since the time that she was young,” says Carina Hamel, who hosted the team sprint Olympic Watch Party at the headquarters of Bivo, the cycling water bottle company she founded that now sponsors Kern and Ben Ogden.
More than a dozen Dartmouth athletes are competing in the Olympics this year, but, as of February 18, only Tanguy Nef ’20 has won a medal. He took gold for Switzerland for his role in the men’s team combined Alpine skiing.
Peggy Shinn is the author of World Class: The Making of the U.S. Women’s Cross-Country Ski Team and has covered nine Olympic Games for TeamUSA.com.
