Souhan: Jessie Diggins and the author telling her story

Jessie Diggins, the cross-country ski star from Afton, Minn., made more history on Sunday, winning the 20km mass start freestyle in Falun, Sweden, while Alaskan Gus Schumacher finished second in the men’s race. That gave the United States its best combined finish in an international meet.

Diggins is headed toward her third overall season title, a year before the start of the Milano Cortina Olympics. In a sport historically dominated by Northern Europeans, Diggins has thrived as a geographical underdog.

When working with a Minnesota author on her 2020 biography, “Brave Enough,” she revealed for the first time just how difficult her path to the top of the skiing world was.

The author she chose was an underdog in his field, as well.

Todd Smith is the son of Hall of Fame hockey trainer Gary Smith, who worked with Herb Brooks’ “Miracle On Ice” team as well as in the NHL. Smith grew up hanging around the likes of Eric Lindros and later worked as a writer for numerous publications, including Minnesota Monthly and the Minnesota Wild website.

His first book, “Hockey Strong,” detailed the pain that hockey players endure. For his second book, he had to get Diggins to choose him over more experienced authors to tell her story.

This led to a strange juxtaposition: Diggins’ father, hosting Smith at the family house in Afton, asking him if he’d ever eaten moose meat and telling him he’d have to come back for some “moose-meat chili.”

And then Diggins sitting at her parents’ dining table, telling him she wanted to reveal that she suffered from bulimia.

“I said that not as a writer but as a parent and an uncle to two nieces, we have the potential to help thousands of people if you reveal that you have an eating disorder,” Smith said.

Diggins chose Smith, and he flew to Vermont to interview her and watch her train. On his first day, they were walking down a tree-lined path when a black bear shot across the road, headed toward a large convention of people doing yoga.

Diggins took off after the bear, screaming at the yogis, then walked back to meet Smith. “She’s like, can you believe that? That’s crazy,’ ” Smith said. “And she was baseline, just normal, about it.”

Diggins insisted Smith train with her and the U.S. Olympic team.

“Jessie Diggins’ warmup session was the full workout for all of the pro athletes that I had grown up with,” Smith said. “Her warmup was an hour and a half, and it was intense — and then they moved into their actual training. One time I’m next to her on exercise bikes, and we’re like 45 minutes in, and I’m dying, and she’s sitting there buying a condo in Boston on her phone. The modern sports world is a different animal.”

Smith compared Diggins to “a samurai, where everything in her life is dedicated to this one thing.”

Smith doesn’t have that luxury. He found the freelance writing world to be off-putting, and hardly lucrative.

He found he had this much in common with Diggins: A willingness to work overtime to achieve a dream.

Smith works 40 to 60 hours a week at a landscaping company. He writes at night and puts in six-hour writing stints on weekends. He’s working on his third book, and when he was trying to get an agent to take him on as a client, he did his interview from a storeroom filled with shovels.

“I work a full-time job and write on the side,” he said. “The discipline it takes for me to do those two things is just what it has to be. I understand that I’m not the best writer, I understand that I’m not the most educated writer, but my discipline can be the X factor, right? No one will outwork me.”

Diggins calls the place where her mind goes when she’s pushing her body “The pain cave.”

Smith counters with “The shovel room.”

One Minnesota striver chose to work with another, and together they did some good.