Breezy Johnson earns comeback gold after Lindsey

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — It was just the sort of mechanical failure Breezy Johnson may abide.

Her gold medal snapped off its ribbon when she was leaping around in jubilation. She stuffed the prize — the first gold medal for an American athlete at the Milan-Cortina Olympics — into her jacket pocket for safekeeping.

“It was definitely heavier than expected, and I think that’s why it broke,” said Johnson, 30, who was injured on the same course 4 years earlier. “I don’t know if the Italians are known for their engineering, but … I assume somebody will fix it.”

The cloudless Sunday was bittersweet for the U.S. staff, the hundreds of followers watching from the bleachers past the end line and the viewers of untold thousands and thousands watching around the world.

That’s because Lindsey Vonn, the 41-year-old legend racing with a torn ACL, violently crashed just 13 seconds into her race, shedding control on the first bounce as her pole hit a gate, turning sideways in the air and slamming to the ground. The race was stopped so medical personnel attended to her and a helicopter airlifted her to an undisclosed hospital.

There was a collective gasp from the group, watching on a video board, as the crash occurred close to the top of the hill and behind a crag. For what felt like an eternity — but was actually 20 minutes — the entire place was enveloped in an eerie silence, the only sound being the regular thump of techno-pop taking part in through the loudspeakers.

As Vonn was being evacuated in a stretcher related by a cable to the chopper — little more than a dot dangling above the trees — the emcee urged the group to cheer loud enough for her to hear. The followers complied, applauding her and the storied profession even fellow skiers have called “superhuman.”

“That definitely was the last thing we wanted to see,” Karin Kildow, Vonn’s sister, said in an interview with Peacock. “It happened quick, so when that happens you’re just like immediately hoping she’s OK. It was scary because when you start to see the stretchers being put out it’s not a good sign.”

Johnson, who skied the course in 1:36.10 — four-hundredths of a second sooner than second-place Emma Aicher of Germany — grimaced and lowered her head in the chief’s chair while watching the replays of the crash.

“I kind of wish the TV directors maybe wouldn’t have replayed some of the crashes as much as they did,” she said. “It’s a little hard when you’re, like, surrounded by cameras and stuff, not, not wanting to watch that.”

Fans react after watching American Lindsey Vonn crash during the ladies’s downhill snowboarding race at the Winter Olympics Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Johnson is aware of the heartbreak the Olimpia delle Tofane course can convey. Four years in the past, during a follow run within weeks of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, she endured a brutal crash right here and suffered a devastating knee injury, lacking the Games.

“I don’t claim to know what she’s going through,” she said of Vonn, “but I do know what it is to be here, to be fighting for the Olympics and to have this course burn you, and to watch those dreams die. It was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life.

“I can’t imagine the pain that she’s going through. And it’s not the physical pain — we can deal with physical pain — but the emotional pain is something else. I wish her the best, and I hope that this isn’t the end.”

When Johnson was growing up, her nickname was “Breezy,” reportedly a reference to the velocity and finesse of her snowboarding. Her given title was Breanna, but her mother and father legally modified it to Breezy when she was ending high faculty.

She has weathered a number of accidents throughout her profession, and served a 14-month competitors ban issued by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from October 2023 to December 2024 after lacking three drug checks during a 12-month period.

For her, Sunday was a new starting. The Jackson, Wyo., native had never received a World Cup event, yet now she joins Vonn as one of two American ladies to win gold in the Olympic downhill.

“People are jealous of people with Olympic gold medals,” Johnson said. “They’re not necessarily jealous of the journey it took to get those medals. I don’t think my journey is something that many people are envious of, and it’s been, it’s been a tough road, but sometimes you just have to keep going, because that’s the only option.

“And you know, if you’re going through hell, you keep walking, because you don’t want to just sit around in hell. And sometimes, when you keep going, maybe you’ll make it back to the top.”