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<\/p>\nCORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0It was just the kind of mechanical failure Breezy Johnson could abide.<\/p>\n
Her gold medal snapped off its ribbon when she was jumping around in jubilation. She stuffed the prize \u2014 the first gold medal for an American athlete at the Milan-Cortina Olympics \u2014 into her jacket pocket for safekeeping.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely heavier than expected, and I think that\u2019s why it broke,\u201d said Johnson, 30, who was injured on the same course four years earlier. \u201cI don\u2019t know if the Italians are known for their engineering, but \u2026 I assume somebody will fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
American Lindsey Vonn crashes into a gate during an alpine ski downhill race at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, Italy, Sunday.<\/p>\n
(Handout \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because Lindsey Vonn<\/a>, the 41-year-old legend racing with a torn ACL<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 but was really 20 minutes \u2014 the whole place was enveloped in an eerie silence, the only sound being the steady thump of techno-pop playing through the loudspeakers.<\/p>\n As Vonn was being evacuated in a stretcher connected by a cable to the chopper \u2014 little more than a dot dangling above the trees \u2014 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 \u201csuperhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat definitely was the last thing we wanted to see,\u201d Karin Kildow, Vonn\u2019s sister, said in an interview with Peacock. \u201cIt happened quick, so when that happens you\u2019re just like immediately hoping she\u2019s OK. It was scary because when you start to see the stretchers being put out it\u2019s not a good sign.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson, who skied the course in 1:36.10 \u2014 four-hundredths of a second faster than second-place Emma Aicher of Germany \u2014 grimaced and lowered her head in the leader\u2019s chair while watching the replays of the crash.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of wish the TV directors maybe wouldn\u2019t have replayed some of the crashes as much as they did,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little hard when you\u2019re, like, surrounded by cameras and stuff, not, not wanting to watch that.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans react after watching American Lindsey Vonn crash during the women\u2019s downhill skiing race at the Winter Olympics Sunday.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t claim to know what she\u2019s going through,\u201d she said of Vonn, \u201cbut 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t imagine the pain that she\u2019s going through. And it\u2019s not the physical pain \u2014 we can deal with physical pain \u2014 but the emotional pain is something else. I wish her the best, and I hope that this isn\u2019t the end.\u201d<\/p>\n When Johnson was growing up, her nickname was \u201cBreezy,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are jealous of people with Olympic gold medals,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily jealous of the journey it took to get those medals. I don\u2019t think my journey is something that many people are envious of, and it\u2019s been, it\u2019s been a tough road, but sometimes you just have to keep going, because that\u2019s the only option.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you know, if you\u2019re going through hell, you keep walking, because you don\u2019t want to just sit around in hell. And sometimes, when you keep going, maybe you\u2019ll make it back to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0It was just the kind of mechanical failure Breezy Johnson could abide. Her gold medal snapped…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":575563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[249859,249860,1582,276,4315,249858,6413,249862,34502,2961,114599,224,5337,249861,551,9582,3007,17823,249857,1628],"class_list":["post-575562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-breezy-johnson","tag-brutal-crash","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-competition","tag-final-race","tag-games","tag-gate","tag-gold-medal","tag-la","tag-lindsey-vonn","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-olympic-gold-end","tag-push","tag-standing","tag-team","tag-thing","tag-vonn","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116036009165515662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fans](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770568872_905_.jpeg\")
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