Her high pace of 86mph (138.51kph) was among the many quickest ever recorded by a girl in an Alpine snowboarding race.
The 38 yards (35 meters) that she leaped off the large Panorama soar halfway down matched how far the boys leap off the famed Hundschopf at Wengen in Switzerland.
American skier Breezy Johnson was actually flying within the girls’s downhill on the world championships on Saturday.
“Just like the Wind” – her private motto.
And though she was the primary racer down, Johnson instantly knew she had accomplished one thing particular, celebrating her run with fist pumps and turning to salute the gang in each course.
About one and a half hours later, Johnson was nonetheless saluting the gang of 15,800 followers who had packed the stands and lined the Ulli Maier course. On the highest step of the rostrum. A “Weltmeisterin” (world champion) in Austria, the house of ski racing.
Not a nasty technique to earn your first victory.
“I used to be psyched as a result of I knew that I had skied my greatest,” the 29-year-old Johnson stated. “I’m simply going to get pleasure from this as a result of I’ve had a variety of instances the place I gave my greatest and I didn’t win. … You need to be proud of your personal snowboarding or your existence turns into very unhappy in a short time.”
Johnson completed 0.15 seconds forward of silver medalist Mirjam Puchner of Austria and 0.21 forward of bronze medalist Ester Ledecká, the Czech athlete who has gained Olympic golds in each snowboarding and snowboarding.
Lauren Macuga, the American who took bronze in super-G two days earlier, completed fifth. And 40-year-old Lindsey Vonn was fifteenth.
Because the victory started to sink in, Johnson grew emotional as she thought-about the previous few years of her profession.
The Jackson Gap, Wyoming, native was on the verge of victory when she recorded three second-place World Cup outcomes over a one-year interval ending in December 2021. Then a crash a month later dominated her out of the 2022 Beijing Olympics with a knee harm.
Earlier than the following season, Johnson got here out as bisexual. She posted on Instagram at the moment: “To these individuals on the market who really feel a little bit completely different and need to see individuals like them on the high I’m right here to characterize that we’re on the market, we’re regular, and we will do no matter we wish.”
However Johnson was then sidelined once more when she missed three anti-doping exams and violated “whereabouts” guidelines that oblige athletes to element the place they are often discovered for one hour every day to provide samples. The violation resulted in a 14-month ban that expired two months in the past.
After her victory Saturday, Johnson stated the primary missed check “was my fault.” For the second she stated she texted her whereabouts to the mistaken quantity. Then for the third missed check, she stated “there was a glitch on the app.””
“I believe a variety of athletes would agree with me to say that it’s a really difficult system,” Johnson stated. “I acknowledge that I might have accomplished higher.”
Downhill standout Sofia Goggia was unforgiving in her evaluation of Johnson’s ban, although.
“Now we have availability each day. Each night time, I’ve to say the place I sleep and I’ve to provide the time slot. I set it between 5 and 6 within the morning and this yr at Christmas they got here to ring my bell,” Goggia, who completed sixteenth, stated Saturday. “Now we have guidelines to observe. We follow the process. Interval.”
Whereas she was out, Johnson was not allowed to coach with the US group. So she funded her personal coaching in Jackson Gap and within the Alps and employed her personal coach, Stefan Abplanalp, in addition to specialists at organising coaching programs.
“These individuals actually helped me a ton and clearly it was a little bit bit lonely. Nevertheless it introduced extra individuals into the village,” Johnson stated. “So that is additionally for them.”
Maybe due to her ban, Johnson has no sponsor on her headgear.
The gold medal may change that, although.
The race was held precisely one yr earlier than the Milan-Cortina Olympics girls’s downhill, which shall be on the monitor in Cortina d’Ampezzo the place Vonn holds the document of 12 World Cup wins and the place Jacqueline Wiles, one other lively American, has completed on the rostrum twice.
Wiles was additionally quick earlier than she went off target throughout her run Saturday.
“Now we have such a robust group and it’s so cool to have the ability to do it on a world stage,” Macuga stated. “Subsequent yr in Cortina … I believe it could be fairly thrilling.”
The US group can be properly poised for Sunday’s males’s downhill, with Ryan Cochran-Siegle having led two of the three coaching classes.
“After I’m feeling assured, I really feel like I do a very good job of stacking the ski on the high of the flip and actually driving in and creating energy,” stated Cochran-Siegle, the Olympic silver medalist in super-G. “I really feel like that the tempo is acquainted to me. … The sunshine is sweet. Only a good venue general for me.”
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