- Breezy Johnson won the Olympic downhill gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
- Johnson overcame a series of injuries and illnesses that made her fear she would miss the Olympics again.
- Her gold medal broke during her celebration and had to be replaced by Olympic officials.
- Johnson joins Lindsey Vonn as the only American women to win the Olympic downhill title.
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — There was a time last fall when Breezy Johnson feared the Olympics were slipping away.
Again.
She’d gotten E.coli during a preseason training camp. The weakness from that contributed to a back injury that caused some of the worst pain she’d ever felt. The 2026 Winter Olympics were coming up fast, and the helplessness she felt when it was mid-December and she wasn’t getting better was all too familiar.
“It sort of felt at the time like my body was rebelling against the dreams that I had,” Johnson told USA TODAY Sports on Monday, Feb. 9. She missed the Beijing Olympics in 2022 after tearing her ACL a month before the Games.
“That was really emotionally debilitating,” Johnson said. “Not just know that something bad had happened that derailed your dreams, (but) that it felt like your body was fighting against you.”
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Maybe that’s why, even a day later, knowing she’s the Olympic downhill champion still feels surreal.
“I still think that something’s going to fly out of left field and they’re going to be like, ‘Whoops! We made a mistake with the timing!’ We’re going to need that back!’” Johnson said.
Well, she did have to give her gold medal back, but that’s because it was broken.
The Milano Cortina medals are heavy. So much so that when Johnson was jumping up and down celebrating her win in the downhill, it fell off its ribbon.
Unlike medals from some other Olympics, the Milano Cortina medals do not have a grommet or hole through which the ribbon is threaded. Instead, the ribbon attaches to a piece that sits in a groove at the top of the medal.
Olympic officials were unable to fix Johnson’s medal, so they gave her an entirely new one instead. It still needs to be engraved with her event, something she’ll eventually have done at the Olympic Village.
“You definitely have to give the other one back,” Johnson said. “But that’s cool.”
Though it wasn’t long ago Johnson feared the universe was conspiring against her, it is fitting that she won in Cortina.
In 2022, Johnson was second in the World Cup downhill standings when she tore her ACL in January. She took a week off but felt her knee was stable enough for her to race the World Cup in Cortina.
After finishing fourth in the first training run, Johnson crashed in the second, tearing a chunk of cartilage off her knee and ending her hopes for competing in Beijing.
Fast forward four years, and Johnson posted the fastest time in the final training run ahead of the downhill. Then, starting sixth, she threw down an aggressive, blistering run that she thought would at least be good enough for a medal.
One after another, the top contenders tried to match her. And couldn’t.
Johnson continued to hold her breath, remembering the super-G race at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang that Esther Ledecka came out of nowhere to win. OK, not nowhere. But the 26 spot in the starting order, which is close to nowhere.
Finally, the race was over. Johnson was the downhill champion, joining Lindsey Vonn as the only American women to win the prestigious title.
“It’s something that you dream about as a kid,” Johnson said. “And then the closer you get to it, the more you realize how rare it is. I mean, there’s so many amazing ski racers who have never been an Olympic champion, and being the Olympic downhill champion is a whole other echelon because I consider it to be the premier Alpine event.
“And, obviously, once every four years is not guaranteed at all,” said Johnson, who knows that better than most. “So it’s really special and very cool to be in that very elusive club.”
Johnson has two more races in Cortina. She and Mikaela Shiffrin are paired in the team combined, which they won at the 2025 world championships when the event made its debut. She also will race super-G. Johnson made her first podium in the event at the last race before the Olympics, claiming the bronze.
“People immediately saw the (downhill) medal and were like, ‘Now go get two more,’” Johnson said with a laugh. “It took me 30 years to get one! Just casually go out and pick up a couple more.
“Ski racing is funny because people, as soon as you start winning, they’re like, ‘Oh, it must be easy to win,’” she added. “And it’s like, ‘No, actually, you have to go out and seize that every day,’ and that’s really the hard part. To continue to do that.”
No harder, though, than pushing forward when everything is pushing against you. But so, so worth it.