Breezy Johnson wins Olympic downhill gold, joining Lindsey Vonn as only other American to accomplish feat

MILAN — Breezy Johnson on Sunday became the second American woman ever to win the Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing, hours after the first person to accomplish the feat, Lindsey Vonn, crashed violently on the famed Tofane course.

Johnson finished in 1:36.1 to earn the first Olympic medal of her career. A native of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Johnson was skiing in her second Olympics. The win was not an upset — Johnson entered the competition as the reigning world champion in downhill.

It was the United States’ first medal of the Milan Cortina Olympics. Johnson extended both arms above her head as she stepped atop the podium before accepting her gold medal. She held back tears while mouthing the words to the U.S. national anthem.

“I had a good feeling about today. I sort of still can’t believe it yet. I don’t know when it will sink in yet,” Johnson said. “I knew I had to push and go harder than I did in training. I had to be super clean and I felt like I did that.”

Yet during the win, Johnson said she was thinking of her dad. Johnson’s father, who taught her how to ski, was in an accident recently, she told NBC News. “He found out that he can no longer ski anymore,” Johnson said tearfully. “And so, yeah, the least I could do is try to ski fast for him.”

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Emma Aicher of Germany earned the silver medal, just four-hundredths of a second behind Johnson. Italy’s Sofia Goggia earned bronze to win the host country’s fourth medal of these Olympics. American Jacqueline Wiles finished fourth.

The victory required Johnson, 30, to confront her own history of difficulty on this course. In 2022, she crashed on a training run in Cortina and tore cartilage in her right knee, forcing her to miss that year’s Olympics in Beijing.

“I’m going to have to come back to this same place with a body that’s been put back together and try to accomplish my goals,” she told NBC last May. “It’s a beautiful place, [but] it has teeth and has also hurt a lot of people.”

Johnson started sixth Sunday on the 1.6-mile course with more than 2,000 feet of elevation drop, making up time on the five who started before her during the back half of the race.

Seven skiers later, however, Vonn crashed violently after only 13 seconds. She was airlifted off the course, which reopened after an approximately 30-minute delay. Sixteen years earlier, Vonn won the Olympic gold medal in Vancouver, Canada.

All the while, Johnson sat in a “leader’s chair” at the bottom of the run, waiting out the 30 competitors behind her to see whether any could dip under her time. She wore a headband she had knit herself, as has become her habit to pass the time before races. By halfway through the field, after the world’s top 10 skiers had already had their runs, it became a stronger likelihood that Johnson would emerge the winner. She became emotional and was seen tearing up.

“Last year at world championships, I won from Bib 1 [the first racer], so I had to wait through the entire race, so I know a little bit about what that’s like. I personally prefer to run early,” she said.

Like the Tofane course itself, Johnson’s path to gold was not a straight line. In May 2024, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency suspended her for 14 months for missing three anti-doping tests in 12 months. Johnson has said the first missed test was her own fault, but she told NBC News in July that issues with the doping agency’s app led to the second and third misses.

Last fall, Johnson injured her back while lifting weights, about eight weeks before the skiing season began, calling it on social media “the worst pain of my life, and that includes the three knee surgeries, the dislocations, and the broken leg.”

Sunday’s race will be remembered for more physical pain, after Vonn could be heard screaming following her crash. The 41-year-old was attempting to become the oldest Alpine skier, man or woman, to medal at an Olympics, and was competing only nine days after tearing the ACL in her left knee.

“My heart goes out to her. I hope it’s not as bad as it looked and I know how difficult it is to ski this course,” Johnson said. “And how sometimes, because you love this course so much, when you crash on it and it hurts you like that, it hurts that much worse.”