Breezy Johnson Unspools Masterful Run to Become Team USA’s Newest Star

The Wyoming native knits to calm her nerves before bombing down ski slopes. On Sunday in Cortina, she stitched together a gold-medal run for the ages.

Breezy Johnson became the second American woman to win gold in the downhill. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — Breezy Johnson has been there before. She has been the one crashing, sustaining devastating injury, seeing an Olympic medal hope suddenly vanish. She knows the resulting pain to body and soul.

Now she knows the other side. The pinch-me side. The side where you slash down a mountain faster than anyone as the whole world watches, and they put a gold medal around your neck, and you try to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” but you’re too busy crying to get through it all.

“That’s the beauty and the madness of it,” Johnson said on a Sunday of extremes for American downhillers. “That it can hurt you so badly, but you keep coming back for more.”

Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story ended in a violent collision of body and mountain on Olympia delle Tofane, sending her to the hospital. Johnson’s comeback story had the happy ending she’d dreamed of for four years. 

Beauty and madness. Now Vonn and Johnson are the only two American women to ever win downhill gold.

In January 2022, Johnson sustained a significant knee injury at this very place, just weeks before the Beijing Olympics. In an eerie precursor to Vonn’s multiple recent crashes, she was trying to ski through an ACL tear previously suffered in Austria and couldn’t do it successfully. That forced her to drop out of the 2022 Winter Games.

“I’ve had quite a history here,”Johnson said. “I knew that with a good run it was possible, but I have had a lot of mistakes here, so it’s really trying to figure out how to avoid those mistakes. 

“I wasn’t quite sure it would be enough for the gold, but I thought when I got down, it would be enough for a medal. And, yeah, just eked it out for the win.”

The margin of victory over second-place Emma Aicher of Germany: four one-hundredths of a second. Flanked on the podium by Aicher and Italian bronze medalist Sofia Goggia, who lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony Friday, Johnson couldn’t hold back her emotions. She sang and cried, then sang and cried some more.

The renowned Olympia delle Tofane hosted an eventful day in the women’s downhill. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Johnson fought through some early mistakes that cost her fractions of seconds, then hammered through the latter stages of the 1.6-mile course. The 30-year-old from Jackson, Wyo., was the sixth skier, taking a seat just off the finish line as the race leader and never relinquishing it.

“I think that this was the best run Breezy’s ever skied,” said U.S. teammate Bella Wright. “I’ve seen her ski ever since I was eight years old. We’ve competed with each other. Today she had some mistakes, she had some wild moments, but she really was so gritty. And I knew it was going to be a hard run to beat. She nailed it and she’s shown that she can handle that pressure and perform when it counts most.”

Johnson’s preferred method of handling the pressure: knitting. Saturday night, she calmed her nerves and kept her hands busy the way she does before every race, knitting a headband.

“They’re my good-luck charm,” she said Saturday.

On Sunday, Johnson stitched together quite a yarn.

Johnson put herself in position for this triumph with the fastest training run of all competitors Saturday. She thought the course was too soft on Friday—“soap” she called it—after a major snowfall earlier in the week. On Saturday it had the firmness she was hoping for, but thought the jumps had too much lift on them.

“I’m not a freestyle skier,” she quipped, referring to the big air those athletes when going off jumps angled into the sky.

Sunday, apparently, was just right.

Johnson made her first Olympic team in 2018, but did not make the medal podium. After the heartbreak of ’22, she was ready for her moment this time around.

“I was telling my mom a week ago, ‘You go to your first Olympic Games to have been to the Olympic Games. You go to your second Olympic Games to win a medal and you go to your third Games to win the whole damn thing,’ ” Johnson said. “It’s really special.”

Johnson set a blistering time of 1:36.10 as the sixth skier out of the gate. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Johnson now figures to be paired with the world’s most accomplished slalom skier, fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin, in the new team combined event. (Vonn might well have been in that spot had she not crashed and been hospitalized.) A Johnson-Shiffrin team would be the pre-race favorites, giving Johnson a chance to rapidly go from zero career gold medals to two.

If she gets a second one around her neck, she’ll treat it more gently than the first one.

“Don’t jump in them,” Johnson said. “I was jumping in excitement, and it broke. I’m sure somebody will fix it. It’s not crazy broken, but a little broken.”