Breezy Johnson becomes Wyoming’s double world champ

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A whirlwind of emotions enveloped U.S. Ski Team downhiller Breezy Johnson upon winning the world championship downhill gold medal in Austria this week, but she didn’t forget her Wyoming roots.

From the day years ago when she designed a T-shirt to raise money, to last year’s training in Switzerland which she had to again fundraise for, she had backers in Jackson Hole and beyond who believed in her grit.

“There are so many people who have helped me,” she said in an emotional television interview after her downhill victory Saturday.

In two remarkable races within 36 hours of one another at the World Championships in Saalbach, Austria, Johnson, 29, won the women’s downhill gold and then, with Mikaela Shiffrin, the team-combined gold medal as well.

“She has been knocked down a couple of times with injuries,” Steve Porino, NBC’s “voice of alpine skiing,” told WyoFile. Johnson also had to sit out for 14 months for a “whereabouts violation” — failing to keep officials apprised of her location so that she could be drug tested at a moment’s notice. (She has never used drugs, she and her mother said.)

“She didn’t have opportunities to really train,” Porino said of the suspension that ended last fall. “So it was a year of idling for her, wondering whether the world of skiing was pulling away from her.”

While there may have been doubts about Johnson in the Western Hemisphere, European coaches could feel a zephyr. When the women’s downhill course was laid out in Saalbach last year, they told Johnson’s ski technician what they envisioned.

“All of the Austrian coaches were coming up to him and [saying] ‘this is a Breezy-Johnson course,’” Porino said. “‘We have a tremendous amount of fear for when she comes back, because this is her course, and it’s quite high-speed.”

86 mph

Johnson went 86 mph down the Zwölferkogel peak and 38 yards through the air over the Panoramasprung to win the downhill Saturday by 0.15 seconds. It took her just over 1:40 to finish the race.

Porino called the course “a classic downhill, high speed, lots of terrain. There’s not these very sharp turns.

“The higher the speed is, the more aerodynamics matter,” Porino said. Johnson was able to hold her tuck longer than others. “When you’re strong like a bull, you have an advantage.”

In such a pure speed test, “a lot of bravado’s required,” he said. “That’s what she’s made of, and the whole World Cup circuit saw it.”

After the downhill victory, Johnson and Shiffrin had a chat. The two have known one another as friends, competitors and teammates for 15 years or longer.

“They set out rooming lists when we were children,” Johnson said of their early ski-camp years. “And I got roomed with this introverted blonde girl. We bonded over the fact that we both skied on Atomic.”

Shiffrin told of how they teamed up last week.

“After becoming world champ in downhill Saturday, Breezy Johnson told me ‘if you want to do the [team combined], I would be honored to pair with you,” Shiffrin wrote in a social post. “‘Not because of the medal, but because this sport is crazy fun and it would be fun to bring it full circle after all these years.’”

“What a wise woman,” Shiffrin wrote.

Shiffrin, recovering from an injury, had opted out of a giant slalom race, but saw the team combined as an opportunity. The U.S. Ski team paired the best slalom and best downhiller together, based on data, in the first-ever world championship race of its kind.

Johnson was fourth in the downhill, Shiffrin third in the slalom. Their combined time was 0.39 seconds ahead of the second-place team from Switzerland.

‘Tops the list’

With the combined win, Shiffrin tied the record for world medals at 15 and broke the modern-era record with her eighth gold.

At a reception after the race, Shiffrin reflected on a bond and two careers that began more than a decade ago.

“We talked at that time about the hopes and dreams, and I think we connected specifically about feeling like we were a little bit lost in a world where young girls were not really supposed to be as ambitious as we were,” Shiffrin said.

She spoke to Johnson.

“Everything you’ve overcome to get here this past year and a half, you’ve had to do a lot of it on your own, and that has been unbelievable to watch,” Shiffrin said. “I’m so grateful to be your teammate today. Thank you for a memory that tops the list of any medal I’ve ever won.”

For Shiffrin, “everything else has been a solo act,” Porino said, “and this is the first time, I think she’s experienced this real sense of team, relying on a teammate coming through.

“No one has had more experiences with winning than Mikaela,” Porino said, yet “that one [medal] stands alone.

“The fact that they were the greatest 15 years later is a pretty neat story.”