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February 8, 2026 
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Sports scientists agree that few sports test the human body more than cross-country skiing. Besides mastering technical movements, trudging up hills and flying down them — all in the cold — its athletes’ hearts pump out blood like a fire hose to keep up with the enormous energy demands of their legs and arms. But there’s another skill that separates Olympic athlete Jesse Diggins: pain tolerance. “She’s one of the best at getting exhausted, and one of the best at continuing after she’s exhausted,” says Thomas Losnegard, a skiing professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
In his feature article, Reid Forgrave investigates how Diggins is able to push herself to such extremes. It’s a fascinating view into what it takes to be the best cross-country skier in American history — in a sport that might feature mankind’s fittest competitors.
Watch The Interview with Michael Pollan on YouTube.
For this week’s cover story, Charles Homans writes about what he saw on the ground in Minneapolis under siege.
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| Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times. |
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