While one dream came to an end, another came true.
Lindsey Vonn’s heartbreaking crash during the women’s downhill race brought a quick end to her Olympic comeback Sunday morning, but one Team USA teammate completed a dream.
Breezy Johnson won her first Olympic gold medal after crushing her downhill run with a time of 1:36.10. The sixth racer down the mountain, Johnson watched every contender make a charge at her time and come up short — Germany’s Emma Aicher was just 0.04 seconds off Johnson’s time to take silver — on the famed course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
It marked the first medal won by the U.S. in the Milan Cortina Olympics, and it also made Johnson — whose given name is Breanna but who legally changed her name to Breezy to match her nickname shortly before she began high school — the second American woman to win gold in the Olympic downhill, joining Vonn, who took the gold in 2010.
The win was a long time coming for the 30-year-old.
Team USA skier Breezy Johnson points to her gold medal after winning the women’s downhill event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy on Feb. 8, 2026. AFP via Getty Images
US’ Breezy Johnson reacts in the finish area of the women’s downhill event during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo. AFP via Getty Images“People are jealous of people with Olympic gold medals. They’re not necessarily jealous of the journey it took to get those medals,” Johnson told reporters after her victory. “I don’t think my journey is something that many people are envious of and it’s been a tough road, but sometimes you just have to keep going because that’s the only option. If you’re going through hell, you keep walking because you don’t want to just sit around in hell.”
Milan Cortina is only Johnson’s second Olympics. In the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, she placed seventh in the downhill and 14th in the Super-G. Four years ago, she suffered a right knee injury in Cortina in a major training crash that kept her from competing in the 2022 Beijing Games.
Johnson also was banned from competing for 14 months from October 2023 to December 2024 by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for three separate violations over a 12-month period of drug testing protocols. Under USADA policy, athletes must inform authorities of where they will be for at least one hour every day for unannounced testing.
“I am sorry that the slowness of this process has made it seem like I am obfuscating anything,” Johnson wrote on Instagram the day after USADA announced the ban. “I would like to clarify that filing failures are NOT a drug test failure but, as the name describes, an issue with drug testers being able to find me.”
Johnson also wrote she had been tested many times and never failed a drug test.
The Idaho native, who learned to ski in Jackson Hole, Wyo., finally got in a groove last year, winning the women’s downhill at the 2025 World Championships in Saalbach, Austria. She also won gold in the combined at those worlds alongside slalom specialist Mikaela Shiffrin.
US’ Breezy Johnson reacts in the finish area of the women’s downhill event during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo on February 8, 2026. AFP via Getty ImagesAfter pacing the field in Saturday’s training run, Johnson was ready for the big day.
“I had a good feeling about today. I sort of still can’t believe it yet, so I don’t know when it’ll sink in,” she said. “I knew I had to push. I knew I had to go harder than I did in training. I had to be super clean, and I felt like I did that. I got a little bit squirrely off of some of the jumps, but I tried to just keep it rolling and I knew the speeds were good. I just hoped it would be enough.”
Italy’s Sofia Goggia (1:36.69) took the bronze. American Jacqueline Wiles nearly made the podium as well, but finished just shy in fourth place with a time of 1:36.96.
Johnson grew more and more emotional as the race went on after the main challengers had finished and no one else was close to matching her pace, wiping away tears with her glove.
In this screen grab taken from a video shows Lindsey Vonn of United States crashing during the Women’s Downhill. REUTERS“I was telling my mom, you go to your first Olympic Games to have been to the Olympic Games,” Johnson said. “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 showed a face of worry after Vonn, the 13th racer on the course, crashed. It took about 20 minutes until the three-time Olympic medalist was airlifted and the race resumed.
Hours after the race, U.S. Ski & Snowboard announced Vonn underwent “an orthopedic operation to stabilize a fracture reported in her left leg” at a hospital in Treviso.
During her news conference, Johnson said Vonn’s coach told her “Lindsey was cheering for me from the helicopter.”
