Alpine skiing-Johnson wins downhill after big crash for teammate Vonn

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 8 : World champion Breezy Johnson won the women's Alpine skiing downhill at the Milano Cortina Olympics on Sunday in a race interrupted and overshadowed by U.S. teammate Lindsey Vonn crashing heavily and being taken to hospital.

Germany's Emma Aicher secured the silver medal with a time 0.04 of a second slower than Johnson's winning one minute and 36.10 seconds, while Italy's home favourite and 2018 champion Sofia Goggia had to settle for bronze.

Johnson's Olympic title, won on Cortina d'Ampezzo's spectacular Olimpia delle Tofane piste gleaming in the sunshine, came exactly a year after she bagged the world championship gold at Saalbach, Austria.

It was the U.S. team's first medal of the 2026 Games, and Johnson is their first women's downhill champion since Vonn in 2010, and only their second ever.

Wyoming-born Johnson was banned for 14 months in May 2024 after three anti-doping whereabouts failures. She has also had a career punctuated by injury, and she missed the 2022 Beijing Games after a crash in downhill training in Cortina.

"I had a good feeling about today," she said. "I sort of still can't believe it yet.

"The run, 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." 

The American, fastest in a weather-interrupted final training on Saturday when Vonn was third, had started sixth and soared to the top of the leaderboard with a time more than a second quicker than previous leader Ariane Raedler of Austria.

Other than Aicher, the 10th starter, the big guns that followed all failed to come close to a skier who has yet to win a World Cup race and had a nervous wait to be sure of gold.

The race was then halted when Vonn, 13th