Mikaela Shiffrin / Breezy Johnson celebrate Team Combined Gold / GEPA pictures
With Olympic dreams dashed in 2022, the downhiller, at the top of her game, knows opportunities are never guaranteed
Around this time last year, Breezy Johnson was far from her best head space. Returning from a year of USADA-mandated time off racing due to a doping-test whereabouts violation, Johnson said she felt like a criminal. On top of that, she was starting in the back of the field.
Ranked the No. 2 downhiller in the world in January 2022, Johnson was flying high before a hard crash in Cortina d’Ampezzo resulted in right-knee damage that ended her Beijing Olympic dreams before they started. After several months recovering from surgery, she bounced back to the front of the pack, landing several top 10s in the 2022-23 season. Then came the ban in 2023-24, during which Johnson spent the winter freeskiing at her home mountain, Jackson Hole, Wyo., and working with private coaches to keep up on her race tactics. That work showed.
Skyward trajectory last season
In her first race back last season, Johnson fired from bib No. 32 to 13th place in the Beaver Creek downhill. After that, she crescendoed into some of the greatest moments of her career (so far). Following Beaver Creek, the downhiller landed 11th despite starting 33rd. Cortina, the site of her fateful crash and her worst downhill result of the season — 22nd. Still, her trajectory skyrocketed afterward. With a better starting position (23rd), she notched fourth in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen downhill, missing the podium by 0.06 seconds.
Then came the World Championships in Saalbach, Austria, and Johnson delivered the strongest racing of her career. Wearing bib No. 1, she would never relinquish the lead. She collected the first major win (and hardware) of her career: a downhill gold medal. With the glory — and expectations — still soaring, she joined teammate Mikaela Shiffrin in the Team Combined event three days later to land a second gold.
Reflecting on the accomplishment last month while training at Copper Mountain, Johnson said it was huge for both her and Shiffrin, who at the time was returning from weeks off after injury.
Gold medals, better together
“Both of us, despite so much success, still sometimes feel a little bit like, ‘I’m not good enough.’ Mikaela in that moment didn’t feel like she was necessarily even the best slalom skier on the team, let alone going to win,” Johnson recalled.
Shiffrin texted her the morning of the World Champs team combined pointing out that German slalom specialist Lena Duerr was on fire and would probably beat her, but she would try her best.
“I was like, ‘girl, calm down,’” Johnson said. “I think Mikaela had been very afraid of team combined because there were things said in the media that made it seem like she was the auto win. Then I won the downhill and it was like, you’re the auto win. Both of us were trying to reassure the other. That lack of pressure, I think, allowed us to win. It was really validating to feel like neither of us won our run alone that day, but we could win together.”
That moment, along with her downhill victory — both fused together in her memory — brought on some of the strongest, most validating emotions Johnson has ever experienced, particularly after what she’d been through the previous season and overcoming injuries.
When skiing loves you back
“You start out and you’re like, I love this sport, the sport loves me. Then you kind of get burned by the sport and you’re like, okay, the sport is just the sport. It can’t love me. Then you start being like, maybe the sport hates me. Maybe it’s actively working against me. Then, after the success last year, I was like, OK. The sport is just a sport. It goes both ways.”
As for her 22nd place in Cortina last year, Johnson attributes it more to her start position (34th) than to re-surfaced nerves from her crash there before the 2022 Olympics.
“It just felt like pulling teeth at all of those races starting outside of the top 30,” she said. “I don’t think anybody outside of the top 30 made it into the top 20. Nobody outside of the top 20 made it in the top 10. It was just really hard to move up bib positions there. It’s advantageous for people already in the top 20 or top 10. It’s nice to be the advantaged one going into this season.”
Starting off in St. Moritz this week, where Johnson’s best finish was a fifth in downhill in 2022, the Wyoming native says she is feeling confident with the calendar and with her plan. The Olympics, of course, are a major focus. At age 29, she believes this February might be her ultimate chance to shine bright on the big stage.
Tentative Olympic dreams
“It feels like it might be my last Olympics at the top of my game,” she said. “I definitely plan to do more Olympics, but it’s hard to say at 34 if I’ll still be peaking. There’s new evidence coming out that apparently that’s when the best ski racing happens. But for me, I’m treating this like it’s the last one I’ll ever get, so just give it everything I have.”
She can already envision the tale of her journey if she does well in Cortina, the place that curtailed her last Olympics. She also knows better than anybody that nothing, not even a start, is ever a given.
“Having had to miss the last Olympics due to a crash on the same hill we’re racing this Olympics has the potential for a very cool, full-circle moment,” she said. “I’m definitely focused on making those things happen. I don’t have any confidence anymore that I will be at the Olympics. I know I have to work for every moment in order to go accomplish that.”
About the Author: Shauna Farnell
