Johnson wins downhill for USA's first Milan gold

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — An American won the women’s downhill Sunday, but it wasn’t who was expected. Lindsey Vonn’s teammate, Breezy Johnson, became the second U.S. woman to win Olympic downhill gold and secured Team USA’s first medal at the Milan Cortina Games.

To win on this course today, skiers had to take risks. Johnson skied aggressive lines from top to bottom, and while her run wasn’t perfect, she pushed the limits of the course. For some, that led to disaster. Vonn, whose race ended after 14 seconds, was the first of three crashes during the race. She and Andorra’s Cande Moreno, her country’s flagbearer in Friday’s opening ceremony, were both airlifted off the mountain.

For Johnson, skiing on the edge led to gold. After starting sixth, Johnson sat in the finish area for nearly the entire race waiting to learn if her time of 1 minute, 36.1 seconds would hold up.

“I had a good feeling about today. I sort of still can’t believe it yet, so I don’t know when it’ll sink in,” Johnson said. “I knew I had to push. I knew I had to go harder than I did in training. I had to be super clean, and I felt like I did that. I got a little bit squirrely off of some of the jumps, but I tried to just keep it rolling and I knew the speeds were good. I just hoped it would be enough.”

Germany’s Emma Aicher and Italy’s Sofia Goggia took silver and bronze, respectively. Aicher finished 0.04 seconds behind Johnson. American Jacqueline Wiles finished 0.27 off the podium.

A 2025 world champion in the downhill, Johnson, 30, competed at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games but did not medal. She missed the 2022 Olympics with a right knee injury, was given a 14-month ban that expired in December 2024 for missing three anti-doping exams and violating “whereabouts” rules and returned to win the world championship last February.

Vonn’s Olympic story, however, ended much as it started, with a helicopter recovery after a devastating crash.

Wearing bib 13, Vonn dropped into Cortina’s Olympia delle Tofana downhill course looking aggressive but clipped a gate with her right ski pole while going over a jump, was thrown off balance, got twisted in the air and crashed. As medical staff attended to Vonn, she could be heard crying out and was eventually strapped to a board and airlifted from the mountain. The race was put on a hold for nearly 30 minutes.

“It’s like the man in the arena, she dared greatly,” Vonn’s sister, Karin Kildow, told NBC. “She put it all out there. She always goes 110 percent, there’s never anything less, so I know she put her whole heart into it. Sometimes things happen. It’s a very dangerous sport.”

Kildow said Vonn’s surgeons and doctors are in Cortina and that she was being evaluated. Vonn completely tore the ACL in her left knee in a crash during downhill practice at a World Cup in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, just over a week ago.

Vonn has won in Cortina more than any skier at any venue. She was motivated to make this comeback in part because the Olympics were taking place here.

“I hope it’s not as bad as it looked,” Johnson said of Vonn’s crash. “I know how difficult it is to ski this course and how sometimes because you love this course so much, when you crash on it and it hurts you like that, it hurts that much worse. My heart just goes out to her.”

Vonn became the first U.S. woman to win gold in the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.