CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — It was just the kind of mechanical failure Breezy Johnson could abide.
Her gold medal snapped off its ribbon when she was jumping 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 four 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. team, the thousands of fans watching from the bleachers beyond the finish line and the audience of untold millions watching around the world.
American Lindsey Vonn crashes into a gate during an alpine ski downhill race at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Sunday.
(Handout / Getty Images)
That’s because Lindsey Vonn, the 41-year-old legend racing with a torn ACL, violently crashed just 13 seconds into her race, losing control on the first jump 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 crowd, watching on a video board, as the crash happened near the top of the hill and behind a crag. For what felt like an eternity — but was really 20 minutes — the whole place was enveloped in an eerie silence, the only sound being the steady thump of techno-pop playing through the loudspeakers.
As Vonn was being evacuated in a stretcher connected by a cable to the chopper — little more than a dot dangling above the trees — the emcee urged the crowd to cheer loud enough for her to hear. The fans complied, applauding her and the storied career 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 faster than second-place Emma Aicher of Germany — grimaced and lowered her head in the leader’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 women’s downhill skiing race at the Winter Olympics Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Johnson knows the heartbreak the Olimpia delle Tofane course can bring. Four years ago, during a practice run within weeks of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, she endured a brutal crash here and suffered a devastating knee injury, missing 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 speed and finesse of her skiing. Her given name was Breanna, but her parents legally changed it to Breezy when she was finishing high school.
She has weathered several injuries throughout her career, and served a 14-month competition ban issued by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from October 2023 to December 2024 after missing three drug tests during a 12-month period.
For her, Sunday was a new beginning. The Jackson, Wyo., native had never won a World Cup event, yet now she joins Vonn as one of two American women 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.”