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

By Alan Baldwin

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 8 (Reuters) – 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 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 Sofia Goggia had to settle for bronze.

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

It was also the U.S. team’s first medal of the 2026 Games.

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.

The race was then halted when Vonn, 13th out of the start hut and a serious medal contender, lost control and crashed as fans and teammates gasped in horror. Johnson appeared close to tears, wiping her eyes and looking down.

Vonn, leader of the downhill World Cup, appeared to clip the fourth gate with her shoulder and lost control, barrelling off the course at high speed before coming to rest in a crumpled heap.

The 2010 downhill champion could be heard screaming on television coverage.

Her run lasted barely 13 seconds but, with the 41-year-old great already the headline act as she sought to overcome a serious knee injury and become the oldest Olympic Alpine medallist, all the attention was fixed on the stricken American.

Jacqueline Wiles was fourth equal for the United States with Austria’s Cornelia Huetter.

Italy’s Federica Brignone, making an Olympic comeback after suffering  multiple leg fractures and a torn anterior cruciate ligament last April, was 10th.

There were further interruptions to the race when Austria’s Nina Ortlieb and Andorra’s last starter Cande Moreno crashed, the latter taken away on a stretcher. 

(Additional reporting by Julien Pretot and Sara Rossi, editing by Hugh Lawson and Christian Radnedge)