STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
It was—drumroll please—an Idaho gal who won Team USA’s first gold medal of the 2026 Winter Olympics at Milan Cortina.
Breezy Johnson, who grew up in the eastern Idaho town of Victor at the base of Targhee Ski Resort, breezed to a gold—well, if you can call hitting a top speed of 80 miles per hour a breeze—to win gold in Women’s Downhill on Sunday.
With that she became the first American woman not named Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn to win an individual medal in Alpine skiing since Julia Mancuso won bronze in super combined in 2014.
And she became just the second American woman to win the downhill—Lindsey Vonn, of course, being first to do so at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s gold medal run was overshadowed by Lindsey Vonn’s crash 14 seconds into her race when she clipped a gate and slammed into the snow.
Vonn had surgery later to repair a broken left leg—the same leg where she had ruptured her ACL racing in Switzerland nine days earlier.
Vonn had owned the Olympia delle Tofana course at Cortina. She held a record 12 World Cup titles on it, earning her the nickname “Queen of Cortina.” She had finished third in a training run to Johnson’s first the day before Sunday’s crash.
Ironically, Johnson crashed on that same track during a training run in 2022. That crash kept her out of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
But on Sunday, the 30-year-old moved on from those demons, making tight lines in her turns to finish in 1:36.10.
It was the first Olympic medal for the woman who knits a headband before each race. She competed at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, taking seventh in the downhill and 14th in Super-G.
Germany’s Emma Aicher took silver Sunday, finishing 0.04 seconds behind, and Italy’s Sofia Goggia took bronze. TEAM USA’s Jackie Wiles was fourth with a time of 1:36.96.
Italy’s Frederica Brignone who endeared herself to Sun Valley crowds during the 2025 Audi FIS World Cup Finals in Sun Valley last March, was tenth in Sunday’s downhill with a time of 1:37.29. She spent summer and fall recovering from multiple leg fractures and ACL tear sustained in the Italian ski championships following Sun Valley’s World Cup Finals.
The 5-foot-8 Breezy Johnson, whose given name is Breanna Noble Johnson, will compete in the team combined on Tuesday, Feb. 10, and the Super G on Thursday, Feb. 12.
DID YOU KNOW? Breezy Johnson had hardly been handed her heavy gold medal when it broke off the ribbon.
The 2026 Winter Olympic medals are the heaviest in history weighing about 1.1 pounds. The gold ones contain 500 grams of pure silver plated with six grams of gold.