Three Wyoming women to ski in Olympic events

Jackson Hole native and alpine racer Breezy Johnson is expected to compete in the high-speed downhill in the Winter Olympics next month in Cortina, Italy, according to a Wednesday nomination announced by U.S. Ski and Snowboard. She’s the reigning world champion in the sport.

The organization also named Alta’s Jaelin Kauf, who calls Grand Targhee Resort home, to the women’s moguls team. Kauf won a silver medal in the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing and was world champion last year.

Anna Gibson, another Jackson Hole native, will compete in the first-ever Olympic Ski Mountaineering competition, a sport that grew out of skiing up and down snowbound alpine terrain, including by military patrols. Gibson will compete with racing partner Cam Smith in the mixed relay.

U.S. Ski and Snowboard said its team will be officially announced Monday. The 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games in Italy will run Feb. 6-22.

Like the Wind

Johnson will return to a course that has bedeviled her. In 2022, she severely injured her knee in a crash on the steep and spectacular Olympia delle Tofane course that drops between two cliffs and down about 2,500 feet to the heart of Cortina d’Ampezzo.

“I know that I can be really fast on this course,” Johnson said in a taped message sent during training. “I know that it has burned me in the past, but I also know how well I can ski it.

“I’m taking the good and the bad and really using all of that experience to put together the run that I know I can on that course and really bring the journey full circle in Cortina.”

Johnson wears the bucking bronco on her helmet as part of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort logo.

“The bucking horse on my helmet reminds me of the toughness of the state, the toughness of the people there and my toughness.”

Breezy Johnson

“When I race with the bucking bronco, I feel like I’m very grateful to the community that helped raise me, that helped support me through so many tough times,” she said. “They always say that people are jealous of the end goals, but not of the journey they got you there.

“I feel like Jackson has been with me through that journey,” she said. “They’ve supported me through the journey, and so having the bucking horse on my helmet reminds me of the toughness of the state, the toughness of the people there and my toughness.

Wyoming is a proud state, she said, and Jackson an incredible community. Her family now lives in Victor, Idaho, part of the greater Teton community, where her mother is an attorney and her father a construction manager.

“I think so much of [how] those mountains have shaped me. We’re so much more than the rectangle that we were known for around the world.”

From Alta to altitude

Jaelin Kauf will be competing in her third Olympics, traveling from her hometown of Alta — population 650 — to the altitudinous world stage in front of millions at Cortina. She said she’s excited to take part in the debut Olympic event of dual moguls, in which skiers go head to head, along with her regular moguls run.

She’s the reigning world champion in both events.

Kauf stopped in Alta over the holidays and skied at Grand Targhee Resort, where she grew up jumping off cat tracks with her parents. A run there, Jaelin’s Silver, commemorates her Beijing Olympic medal.

Despite being clothed in winter garb, she was recognizable.

“I definitely took some photos with some people and kids,” she said.

At the last Olympics, she was alone in China. No spectators were allowed at the Yanging National Alpine Skiing Center because of COVID policies.

Instead, Teton Valley, Idaho folk, who live below Alta, and residents of the Wyoming town gathered for a watch party at the Tetonia Club, owned by her father Scott Kauf. “It sounds like it was awesome,” she said of the event.

This time, she’ll have slopeside support.

“There are like 30 to 40 people, maybe more, going over there this year,” she said of the venue in Italy. “I have high school friends, obviously my family, a pretty big support group, which should be awesome.”

Television may show a lone skier as Kauf bounces through the bumps, but there’s more.

“It’s me skiing on the hill, but I’m not doing it alone,” she said. “It takes a village, a community. I’m definitely going to be feeling the love.

“I have a lot of Wyoming pride,” she said. “It’s really cool to represent our state on the Olympic stage at the highest level of the sport.” Wyoming, after all — Grand Targhee Resort — is “where all the love and passion started,” she said.

It’s a privilege, she said, “to represent such a tiny Wyoming town on such a big stage, and be able to be a bit of inspiration for kids across the state of Wyoming, whatever their passion is.”

Fourth Olympic dream

Ski mountaineering became Anna Gibson’s fourth Olympic dream only half a year ago. When she was about 10, growing up among mountain-mad athletes in Jackson, she skied alpine racing events on the local slopes.

In high school, she strode and skated along the valley’s cross-country ski courses and ran track. At the University of Washington, she ran on a record-setting relay team. Two years ago, Gibson went to the U.S. Olympic trials in the 1,500-meter event, getting as far as the semifinals.

In each discipline, she grasped at a vision of the five Olympic rings, a symbol of unity. In traveling to Italy, she’ll bring the U.S. into a Eurocentric sport that’s now spreading across the continents.

“This form of skiing was kind of born in that part of Europe,” she said. The “skimo” relay combines uphill climbing on skis that have “skins” — originally animal skins — attached to the bottom to prevent sliding backward. Then there’s a steep section where the athletes climb while carrying skis on a backpack.

That’s followed by more uphill skinning, then a downhill run. The mixed relay involves a team of one male and one female, each completing a set course twice.

Most Americans “don’t know anything about skins and how skimo works,” Gibson said. They think of skiing as exclusively a sliding event, even though some cross-country events include uphill sections.

In Jackson Hole, however, where you can’t go far without running into a mountain, “going uphill, it’s normal,” she said. Legions of alpinists skin or boot up backcountry hills and mountains daily in search of untracked powder or a thin-air summit.

“Everybody in Jackson lives like that,” she said. “You just do stuff because it’s exciting and outdoors.”

Skiing, including skinning uphill, started with her parents, Gibson said. Among other things, they established and operated the landmark Pearl Street Bagels in Jackson, while skiing above town in their free time.

Gibson recalls skinning up the Gros Ventre Run at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort above Teton Village with her dog, Puzzle. Going uphill was against the rules, but things were looser then, she said.

“I didn’t recognize skimo as something I would do,” she said. “I was mostly enjoying the action of going out and doing it with my family.”

Gibson has a month before her race. She’s been in Jackson Hole, trying not to become obsessed with the Olympics. She has one more race before Italy.

“The biggest challenge is more mental than physical,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out how to quiet all the noise and intensity — treat it like any other race.

“I’m trying to soak up all the energy in Jackson and share this experience with the community,” she said. “Jackson and Wyoming as a whole have taught me the joy sports can bring.”