Latest news with #BreezyJohnson
NBC Sports
28-02-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Breezy Johnson follows World Championships golds with first World Cup podium in 3 years
American Breezy Johnson made her first Alpine skiing World Cup podium in three years in her first top-level race since winning two gold medals at the World Championships. Austrian Cornelia Hütter won by 15 hundredths of a second over German Emma Aicher in Kvitfjell, Norway, on Friday. Johnson was four tenths back. 'I definitely risked a lot,' Johnson told Austrian broadcaster ORF. 'I kind of paid for it in a couple of spots, so I was a little surprised with the result.' Johnson was followed by American teammates Jackie Wiles (eighth place), Lindsey Vonn (13th) and Lauren Macuga (15th). The U.S. put four women in the top 15 of a World Cup downhill for the first time since January 2018. ALPINE SKIING: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule Johnson, 29, previously made seven World Cup downhill podiums in 2020 and 2021, all second- and third-place finishes. She did not make another top-level podium until winning the world title in the downhill three weeks ago. In the three-plus years in between, Johnson missed the 2022 Olympics after tearing cartilage in her right knee in a training crash. She also served a 14-month ban in 2023 and 2024 for failing to properly provide her whereabouts for out-of-competition drug testing. Athletes can be banned up to two years for whereabouts failures. Johnson's level of fault was 'relatively low given the circumstances of the case,' according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Johnson spent much of 2024 training separate from the U.S. team due to the terms of the suspension. It took eight races this season for her to break back into the top 10 of a World Cup race. She then placed fourth in the last World Cup downhill before the World Championships. At worlds, she earned two gold medals, also pairing with Mikaela Shiffrin to win the new team combined event, which makes its Olympic debut in 2026. Johnson is ranked sixth in this season's World Cup downhill standings through five of eight scheduled races. The women's Alpine World Cup continues Saturday with another downhill in Kvitfjell, airing on Nick Zaccardi,
Washington Post
12-02-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Knitting, dancing and SpongeBob are all part of the show for US medalists at skiing worlds
SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria — Two gold medals and one very special headband. American skier Breezy Johnson is leaving the world championships with more hardware than she expected — and with a headband dedicated to host Austria. Johnson, who enjoys knitting, started making a headband in the red-and-white colors of the host country's flag before her downhill victory and finished it in time to wear on the podium for her team combined win with Mikaela Shiffrin .
CBC
11-02-2025
- Sport
- CBC
American Shiffrin claims 1st win after return from injury in team combined with teammate Johnson
Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson of US won Tuesday's team combined race at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria.
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Johnson wins world downhill title after ban
American Breezy Johnson won women's World Championship downhill gold - the first major title of her career - just weeks after returning from a 14-month ban. The 29-year-old returned to the World Cup circuit in December after serving a suspension for three anti-doping whereabouts failures. Johnson, whose career has also been blighted by injuries, set a winning time of one minute 41.29 seconds with the opening run of the day in Saalbach, Austria. "When I came across the line and I saw it was a low 41, I was like 'amazing'," said Johnson, who became the first American to win women's downhill gold since Lindsey Vonn at Val d'Isere in 2009. She faced an anxious wait to celebrate but no-one was able to match her time, with Austria's Mirjam Puchner taking silver 0.15 seconds behind and Czech Ester Ledecka bronze - a further 0.06 back. Vonn, the 2010 Olympic champion making a championships comeback at the age of 40 after retiring in 2019, was 15th, having crashed out of the Super-G on Thursday. "It's a little bit nerve-wracking to sit in the leader's chair but it's way harder to sit there at the top waiting for your run," Johnson told NBC Sports television. "I was definitely grateful to run number one." Johnson was banned by the US Anti-Doping Agency in May for missing three drugs tests in a 12-month window, with her suspension backdated to October 2023. In a post on her Instagram account, she said there had been "an issue with drug testers being able to find me", acknowledging her "human error" but adding "all of my tests have been clean". The 2018 Olympian has never won a World Cup race, with a best finish of second, while the last of her seven podium finishes at the sport's elite level came in 2021. Swiss rookie Franjo von Allmen won the men's downhill title on Sunday in what was his first appearance at a major championships. The 23-year-old became the youngest men's downhill champion in 36 years, knocking Austria's 2021 winner Vincent Kriechmayr into second place by 0.24 seconds. Three of the top five were Swiss, with Alexis Monney third and defending champion Marco Odermatt finishing fifth.
The Guardian
08-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
US skier Breezy Johnson wins shock downhill gold at world championships
Her top speed of 86mph (138.51kph) was among the fastest ever recorded by a woman in an Alpine skiing race. The 38 yards (35 meters) that she leaped off the big Panorama jump midway down matched how far the men leap off the famed Hundschopf at Wengen in Switzerland. American skier Breezy Johnson was literally flying in the women's downhill at the world championships on Saturday. 'Like the Wind' – her personal motto. And even though she was the first racer down, Johnson immediately knew she had done something special, celebrating her run with fist pumps and turning to salute the crowd in every direction. About one and a half hours later, Johnson was still saluting the crowd of 15,800 fans who had packed the stands and lined the Ulli Maier course. On the top step of the podium. A 'Weltmeisterin' (world champion) in Austria, the home of ski racing. Not a bad way to earn your first victory. 'I was psyched because I knew that I had skied my best,' the 29-year-old Johnson said. 'I'm just going to enjoy this because I've had a lot of times where I gave my best and I didn't win. … You have to be happy with your own skiing or your existence becomes very sad very quickly.' Johnson finished 0.15 seconds ahead of silver medalist Mirjam Puchner of Austria and 0.21 ahead of bronze medalist Ester Ledecká, the Czech athlete who has won Olympic golds in both skiing and snowboarding. Lauren Macuga, the American who took bronze in super-G two days earlier, finished fifth. And 40-year-old Lindsey Vonn was 15th. As the victory began to sink in, Johnson grew emotional as she considered the past few years of her career. The Jackson Hole, Wyoming, native was on the verge of victory when she recorded three second-place World Cup results over a one-year period ending in December 2021. Then a crash a month later ruled her out of the 2022 Beijing Olympics with a knee injury. Before the next season, Johnson came out as bisexual. She posted on Instagram at that time: 'To those people out there who feel a little different and want to see people like them at the top I am here to represent that we are out there, we are normal, and we can do whatever we want.' But Johnson was then sidelined again when she missed three anti-doping exams and violated 'whereabouts' rules that oblige athletes to detail where they can be found for one hour each day to give samples. The violation resulted in a 14-month ban that expired two months ago. After her victory Saturday, Johnson said the first missed test 'was my fault.' For the second one she said she texted her whereabouts to the wrong number. Then for the third missed test, she said 'there was a glitch on the app."' 'I think a lot of athletes would agree with me to say that it's a very challenging system,' Johnson said. 'I acknowledge that I could have done better.' Downhill standout Sofia Goggia was unforgiving in her assessment of Johnson's ban, though. 'We have availability every day. Every night, I have to say where I sleep and I have to give the time slot. I set it between 5 and 6 in the morning and this year at Christmas they came to ring my bell,' Goggia, who finished 16th, said Saturday. 'We have rules to follow. We stick to the procedure. Period.' While she was out, Johnson was not allowed to train with the US team. So she funded her own training in Jackson Hole and in the Alps and hired her own coach, Stefan Abplanalp, as well as experts at setting up training courses. 'Those people really helped me a ton and obviously it was a little bit lonely. But it brought more people into the village,' Johnson said. 'So this is also for them.' Perhaps because of her ban, Johnson has no sponsor on her headgear. The gold medal might change that, though. The race was held exactly one year before the Milan-Cortina Olympics women's downhill, which will be on the track in Cortina d'Ampezzo where Vonn holds the record of 12 World Cup wins and where Jacqueline Wiles, another active American, has finished on the podium twice. Wiles was also fast before she went off course during her run Saturday. 'We have such a strong team and it's so cool to be able to do it on a world stage,' Macuga said. 'Next year in Cortina … I think it might be pretty exciting.' The US team is also well poised for Sunday's men's downhill, with Ryan Cochran-Siegle having led two of the three training sessions. 'When I'm feeling confident, I feel like I do a good job of stacking the ski at the top of the turn and really driving in and creating power,' said Cochran-Siegle, the Olympic silver medalist in super-G. 'I feel like that the tempo is familiar to me. … The light is nice. Just a good venue overall for me.'
