Jessie Diggins poses for a photo at the Gold Medal Gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Oct. 25, 2018 in New York.
Here comes Dig… er, the bride.
Jessie Diggins, the cross-country skier whose late finishing kick in the team sprint event in PyeongChang led to Team USA’s first Olympic gold medal in the sport — as well as the now-iconic “Here comes Diggins!” call on the NBC broadcast — announced her engagement to longtime boyfriend Wade Poplawski on Sunday morning.
“I haven’t stopped smiling!! ❤️💍 ” she posted to Instagram, the caption accompanying three photos of the happy couple hiking as Diggins lugged a big, new rock on her left hand.
Poplawski proposed on Saturday, Diggins shared in a separate Instagram story that was captioned with “Yesterday was the best day ever!!”
The news continues an eventful spring for Diggins, who also released her autobiography “Brave Enough” last month. However, one event that did not happen was the FIS World Cup stop scheduled for her hometown of Minneapolis on March 17. Diggins, who was ranked sixth in the world when the remainder of the season was canceled due to COVID-19 precautions, had played a major role in planning the first U.S. tour stop in 19 years. She was also forced to cancel a book launch party early this month at her former high school in the eastern Twin Cities.
However, the “silver lining,” the Afton, Minnesota, native wrote in another Instagram post three days ago, was that all of the cancelations allowed for more time with Poplawski.
“During the book launch I spoke about breaking (just a few) Olympic village rules in order to spend Valentines day with Wade. Every hour that I got to see him meant so much to me!” she wrote. “A big silver lining right now is that I’m getting to spend more hours with him than I’ve ever had. ❤️ While we are staying home we’ve had time to look back on a lot of special memories, like when I first showed him the cliff jumping at our family cabin in Thunder Bay! This photo didn’t make it into the book, but it’s one of my favorites.”
Diggins, 28, has been one of the stars for the U.S. cross-country program that has emerged in recent years as one of the world’s best. At the PyeongChang Games in 2018, Diggins and Kikkan Randall partnered to post a dramatic win in the team sprint, which resulted in Team USA’s first gold medal in the sport and first women’s medal.
With three world cup stops remaining when the 2019-20 season was canceled, Diggins had secured six trips to the podium. A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Poplawski played college ice hockey at Colgate and now works as a fixed income trader at a firm in Boston.
Chrös McDougall has covered the Olympic and Paralympic movements for TeamUSA.org since 2009 on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc. He is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
