Jessie Diggins is fifth in the team sprint.

Jessie Diggins returned Wednesday to the cross-country course at the Beijing Olympics, and to the event that made her a household name: the women’s team sprint. But with a new teammate and a different type of skiing style, Diggins could not write the same ending she crafted four years ago at the Pyeongchang Games.

Diggins and her new partner, Rosie Brennan, finished fifth in the race, unable to keep pace in the final kilometer with a lead group that sped away and claimed the medals. The German pair of Katharina Hennig and Victoria Carl won the gold, followed by the Swedes and the Russians.

When Diggins and Kikkan Randall won the event in 2018, they were the first Americans to earn a medal in cross-country skiing since 1976, ending one of the longest droughts in U.S. Olympic sports. Diggins, skiing the last leg, came from behind with a dramatic sprint to the line in the race’s final moments. It was memorably captured by an announcer’s call: “Here comes Diggins!”

That Olympic race was in the freestyle method, though, a style that most closely resembles the angled movements of roller skating, as opposed to the classical style, in which skiers must keep their skis parallel, often in manicured paths. Since the Olympic team sprint alternates styles every four years, Wednesday’s race was in the classical style.

Many skiers specialize in one discipline, and Diggins, who is far more comfortable skiing freestyle, spent much of her training trying to strengthen her classical technique. But she couldn’t make up the difference in expertise to successfully defend her gold medal.

In the team sprint, two skiers take turns in a relay, each skiing three legs of a 1.5-kilometer loop. It’s an endurance event hidden behind the “sprint” label. The semifinal was held two hours before the final, so each athlete in the final had sprinted around the loop six times before the medals were awarded.

Diggins arrived the Beijing Games as a leader of the U.S. team, a pathfinder who had showed other American cross-country skiers that they could compete with the Scandinavians who have long dominated the sport.

She led by example almost immediately, winning a bronze medal in the women’s freestyle sprint days after the Games began. It was the first individual Olympic medal won by an American woman in cross-country skiing. Brennan finished in fourth place; the combined American performance would have been unimaginable but a few years ago.

A few days later, Diggins and Brennan were part of the American team in the women’s 4×5-kilometer relay, a race split between classical and freestyle. With their teammates Hailey Swirbul and Novie McCabe, they placed sixth, behind a familiar European lineup.

At times, it seemed as if Diggins and Brennan would find themselves on the podium during Wednesday’s race. Both skiers excel in especially cold weather, and the conditions in Zhangjiakou delivered: The temperature at the start was 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Americans were in fourth place after the Brennan’s first leg, and Diggins, who excels on hills, powered to the lead on the second leg. Brennan and Diggins then stayed in the top four until the final exchange, when Diggins was unable to keep up in the final loop.