Idaho native wins Team USA’s first gold of the 2026 Olympic Games

VICTOR, Teton County (Idaho Statesman) – Idaho native Breezy Johnson won Team USA’s first gold of the 2026 Olympic Games on Sunday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Born in Victor, Idaho, Johnson claimed the women’s downhill with a time of 1 minute, 36.1 seconds to best silver medalist Emma Aicher of Germany by .04 seconds. Johnson started sixth out of 36 competitors, so she had a long wait to find out if her time 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, according to ESPN.

“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.”

It is the first Olympic medal of Johnson’s career. She has made one previous Olympic team, taking seventh in the downhill and 14th in Super-G in 2018 at Pyeongchang, South Korea. Johnson was scheduled to compete in 2022 at Beijing, but had to withdraw because of a knee injury sustained in a training crash.

During media interviews after Sunday’s win, Johnson revealed that her gold medal was already damaged. The clip holding the ribbon to her medal broke off.

“I haven’t really been anywhere else,” Johnson said during interviews. “I assume somebody will fix it.”

Johnson is just the second American woman to win the downhill. Teammate Lindsey Vonn was the first to do so at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Vonn also qualified for Milano Cortina, but an accident a week before the Olympics left her with a torn ACL in her left knee. She chose to compete anyway Sunday, crashing about 14 seconds into her race. Vonn had to be airlifted off the mountain.

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Vonn later underwent an orthopedic operation to stabilize a fracture in her left leg, according to ESPN.

Johnson still has two more chances at gold, as she is scheduled to compete in the Super-G on Thursday and the team combined event on Tuesday.