Letter: In defense of the US Ski Team

Editor’s note: The following is a letter to the editor submitted by U.S. Ski Team member Breezy Johnson in response to our editorial, “Yes, we need to talk about medals,” which ran in the wake of disappointing U.S. results at the Olympics. While we greatly appreciate Breezy’s contribution, there are a couple instances in which she mischaracterizes what we said, so we’ll clarify those at the bottom. As always, Ski Racing is open to diverging opinions, and we thank Breezy for sharing her thoughts.

I am writing in response to your “Yes, we need to talk about medals” article.

I have been on the U.S. Ski Team for going on 9 years. Almost a decade of my life in this crazy world. I have been following the Team for much longer. And talking about medals is valuable to be sure, but you’re missing the point.

Let’s look a little deeper than medals shall we? In the 2010-2014 era the U.S. Ski Team had five, count them five, once in a lifetime talents. Lindsey Vonn, GOAT, Mikaela Shiffrin, possible future GOAT, Julia Mancuso, Olympic legend, Bode Miller, undoubtably the greatest male ski racer in U.S. history, Ted Ligety, one of the greatest Giant Slalom skiers ever. These athletes came to the team, save for perhaps Ted to a degree, with all the makings of getting them to the top. When I was growing up working with Todd Brickson, who coached Vonn and Mancuso in their first years on the team, I asked him what it was like to build a racer like that and he laughed ‘I didn’t do anything for them, except not mess up.’

If you look back on that era of Olympic skiing the only name not on the list above is Andrew Weibrecht, a scrappy skier who came up through the U.S. Ski Team system and had a special affinity with the Olympics that he couldn’t find elsewhere. So what did we do in 2010 and 2014, we created Andrew and we didn’t f*ck anyone else up. Congrats. And I truly mean that. Sometimes the hardest thing is to not f*ck up.

But what medals could we have achieved beyond those that we hauled in in 2010 and 2014? In 2010 we might have won a GS medal with Ted, perhaps a couple more from Lindsey and Julia. 10 medals, impressive to be sure, but we were close to maxing out our potential. We however did not have a lot of athletes waiting in the wings who might have stolen a medal on a different day. Sure miracles happen but I’m not here to talk about miracles. We had 5 amazing athletes who performed, but who came to the USST basically fully formed champions. We produced one more.

Now look to 2018. I thought the future looked bleak for the U.S. Team then. Yes we got three medals, two by Mikaela, and one by Lindsey. Likely each of those athletes could have reasonably doubled their tally but that’s a lot of pressure on not a lot of athletes. Women’s Downhill could have hauled in another medal, but the reality was that we had two amazing athletes, who the best we could say to how we had helped them is that we ‘didn’t mess up.’ The only thing we could legitimately say that we created was three maybes in women’s downhill.

I thought it unlikely in 2018 that the men’s team could pull in a medal in 2022. I hoped I could contend in four years and I knew Mikaela would still be a force, but the prospects overall still looked small and not spread across a group of athletes.

But I am happy to say that I was wrong. We did build strength across a variety of athletes. In World Cup in 2018 we only got podiums from 4 different athletes, LV, miki, Ted, and Jackie Wiles, who got hurt on the cusp of the Games. If you looked back a season before? Only the three women and Steven Nyman had a podium. Over 2 years we spread podiums across 5 athletes. And yet two of those athletes are some of the best to have ever graced the sport so of course we got three medals. No one thought about the breadth of the team because those two athletes had enough depth to make the story about something else.

Okay and look at where we are at now. This season alone we spread podiums again across 4 athletes, but RCS was fourth once and got a medal at the Games too so I say 5 podiums. We had an athlete place top ten in every discipline. You look back over the last 2 years? We have had 7 different athletes on the podium at least once. We didn’t even have that many different people podium in 2009 and 2010, we only had 6, including Andrew’s Olympic podium. You want to talk about depth? We finally have depth!

River’s blazing GS run also showed that in four years we may have more than we have now. In a world of Downhillers in their late 30s Ryan may have two or even three more Olympic cycles in his prime (I see you Johan Clarey), Bryce has speed on Bormio and a few more years to get the kind of experience of Dominik Paris, our slalom boys are incredibly young, granted so is Clement Noel, but they have many more slalom gates to bash. On the women’s side we are still quite young, Miki can absolutely go for another Olympics along with Nina, Paula, Keely, myself and who knows who else. The future is bright.

Furthermore, we have depth that isn’t from once in a century talent somehow all piled on top of each other. We built RCS, rehabbed him back from injuries that should have ended his career; River was crafted by many coaches on this team and though possibly has more talent than all of the rest was, I believe, built by this team; Paula has succeeded in spite of the worst practices of the USST over the last 12 years and because of its best; I was taught to ski downhill at this level, I came to the team as a poor tech skier and a questionable prospect, and before injury I was the second best Downhiller in the world; Nina grew up on this team; Bryce was taught speed through our system. We are not comet-like skiers, we are blue-collar worked-their-way-to-the-top-and-didn’t-give-up stories. The U.S. Ski Team taking credit for Lindsey and Mikaela is silly. But they helped the rest of us fight our way to the top. That means something.

The reality is this team was a knife’s edge away from 8 realistic medals, Mikaela could have gotten four, I could have gotten one, River could have gotten one, the Team could have gotten one, RCS did get one. That’s the same haul as Vancouver, our best games. But welcome to ski racing. We all took Mikaela for granted all this time and the reality is that almost every American great in the last 25 years had a down Olympics, Lindsey, 2006, Ted, 2010, and Bode 2006. It happens. All of those athletes became fiercer and better, if not because of it, then after it.

I’m not asking the media to give us a break. Be ruthless. But also do your damn research. Sure ski racing is expensive but at least for now we still have some amazing talent coming up behind me, better talent than came ahead of me to be sure. Boston hasn’t fired their front office just because the Patriots failed to make the playoffs two years ago. And the Browns have had their coach since 2020. Sounds like those programs are trusting the process maybe you should try it?

Although some at the U.S. Ski Team will balk I don’t think any of the depth that I have spoken about is due to Project 26. I’m not even super clear what the hell Project 26 is. Somehow if we just set criteria higher our athletes will be better? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I think that we have a great group of athletes at the moment, we support each other, teach each other and there’s some smart cookies in the group (ever talked to Mikaela about technique? I bet you’d be shocked to hear she knows what she’s talking about). We also have a dedicated group of coaches, most of whom have been in their position for at least 4 years (on the Women’s World Cup Teams at least), and have a good eye. We have a much better team culture than I came into the team with, because of lack of team fees and a more supportive, less Austrian dog eat dog, environment. We have some things to trim up, and for sure we could do with more money, but the bones of the team are good. I’m always skeptical of newcomers and the jury is not back on our new CEO, but I’m more hopeful than I’ve ever been about this team and the direction its going.

Why does me pushing back matter? Why should any of us on the team care what rhetoric gets thrown our way? Because if you want change, which you claim you do. You might just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Articles saying we didn’t build for the future, articles talking about how the organisation is letting us down. Calls for change. We absolutely can always do better. We have made a lot of moves in the last year, many of which probably didn’t have an affect on our medal count… yet. But in my mind this team is in a good place. We need to brush it off, and in the words of Ted Lasso, be a goldfish.

You say it’s the organisations fault; you compare us to Switzerland. You want us to be Switzerland? With how many times the resources? We went to a World Cup last spring in Passo San Pellegrino, the Swiss had 48 coaches there. I don’t think we have half that staff on our entire Alpine team! So give it a rest. You want to complain? Write a damn check because what we are doing is working even if you can’t see it yet. And the great people on the U.S. Ski Team have a lot of brilliant uses for your money.

— Breezy Johnson
U.S. Ski Team Member

Letters to the editor are wholly the opinion of the author. Ski Racing Media does not endorse, edit, or fact-check letters to the editor. We do have a couple rules, which can be found here.

Editor’s note: The public relations effort aside, we spent the last couple days researching and talking to experts, and there does not appear to be any statistical evidence that the U.S. is getting deeper or improving in terms of overall World Cup results. For the sake of clarity, we will analyze and break down these results as we approach the end of the season. In the meantime, if readers would like to do their own research, they can do so here.

In our editorial, we didn’t call on anyone to be fired. We didn’t call on anyone to be thrown off the team. We never said, “Be the Swiss.” We pointed to the Swiss as a team with remarkable depth and then listed four other teams that also fared pretty well at the Games. We suggested there are larger problems, which U.S. Ski & Snowboard and its spokespeople have failed to address.