Games Briefing 🏅 | This is The Athletic’s daily newsletter for the Milan Cortina Olympics. Sign up here to receive the Games Briefing directly in your inbox.
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The Americans have their first medal of these Olympics, and it’s a gold in the downhill for Breezy Johnson, with her compatriot Lindsey Vonn taking a dramatic tumble.
Let’s chase Johnson’s time of 1 minute, 36.10 seconds as we ski through what you need to know:
⛷️ A white-knuckle finish
⛸️ A repeat U.S. gold in figure skating?
🏡 The athletes’ village
📺 What to watch
To stay on top of everything throughout the Games, 📲 stick with our ongoing live coverage and 📅 customize your schedule by day and by sport, tailored to your time zone.
Johnson’s Triumph: An American gold after Vonn’s heartbreak
The 0.04-second edge between Johnson’s gold and the silver won by Emma Aicher of Germany is a reminder that Olympic races are absolutely merciless.
Yet after Johnson’s gnarly run that put her nearly a second up on the field, it looked like everyone left to compete, Vonn included, was going to need perfection to catch her.
And Johnson knew she beasted it.
“I was telling my mom, you go to your first Olympic Games to have been to the Olympic Games. You go to your second Olympic Games to win a medal. And you go to your third Games to win the whole damn thing,” said Johnson, who finished seventh in the downhill in 2018 and qualified for the Beijing Games in 2022 but missed the event because of injury.
Johnson, 30, is known in the sport as a glider, and this course was tailor-made for her to generate tons of speed. Let’s get to know her better:
- She has now won the two biggest downhill races of the past year after nabbing the 2025 world championship in Saalbach, Austria.
- She grew up worshiping Picabo Street, a gold medalist in super-G at the 1998 Olympics and silver medalist in downhill in 1994, who has become a mentor for her.
- She’s the first American in 16 years to capture gold in the Olympic downhill. The last to do it? Vonn, who was going for a wild career capstone by skiing on a ruptured ACL in her left knee.
And Vonn’s crash was intense, seemingly bringing the entire Olympics to a standstill. The grandstands were filled with a stunned silence as the race was paused for 20 minutes while Vonn got medical attention. Some 250 miles away at the Milan media center, where the IOC had moved up a news conference so its executives could finish early to watch the race, gasps could be heard all over the building as Vonn tumbled end over end.
She started 13th and ended her run in just 13 seconds. She went off a jump, clipped a gate in midair, then landed sideways and crashed hard into the snow. Cue the airlift. Here’s a closer look, in photos, at how the crash unfolded.
Johnson, like all of us, was stunned.
💬 “My heart goes out to her. I hope it’s not as bad as it looked. I know how difficult it is to ski this course. Sometimes, because you love this course so much, when you crash on it and (it) hurts you, it hurts that much more.”
Johnson said Vonn’s coach told her the superstar was cheering for her from the helicopter. And we just got official word Vonn “sustained an injury” but is in stable condition.
It’s been a day of agony and joy — both hallmarks of the Olympics.
Around the Games
⛸️ The figure skating team final is tonight, and in a bit of a twist, Ilia Malinin is set to compete in the men’s free skate. That wasn’t part of the plan until his run last night fell a tiny bit short, even though it was highly entertaining, as Marcus Thompson II notes. The American team won gold in Beijing four years ago and is ahead of Japan and Italy at the moment.
🏒 Canada has named its men’s hockey captain: Sidney Crosby.
🇳🇴 Johannes Høsflot Klaebo of Norway, already the most successful man in cross-country skiing, dominated the men’s 10km + 10km skiathlon, with his closest competitor more than 2 seconds behind. Rebecca Tauber was there for us.
📰 We’re seeing scattered political expressions throughout the Games. One American fan brought a banner to figure skating that offered “apologies to the world.” Another wore an outfit that carried the last name of President Donald J. Trump in large block letters. Steve Buckley talked with both of them, and Oskar chatted with the IOC about how it’s approaching political speech here.{{#if isSubscriber}}{{else}}
📍On the Scene: Inside the athletes’ village
Many of you have asked us what it’s like inside the athletes’ village, so we sent Britt Ghiroli to the one in Milan (with mostly pride and a mild amount of jealousy).
Inside, she saw competitors adopting plants and showing off in front of those famed Olympic rings. They’re also eating great, drinking smoothies, trading pins and just generally reveling in one of the best experiences any athlete can have. Watch Britt’s full report:
Planning Ahead: What to watch Monday
We remind you that as you look at our schedule, the times it shows will be custom to the time zone of your device. And things are not nearly as intense for Monday as they have been so far — which might be a welcome reprieve for you if you’re planning to watch the Super Bowl — but there are still five golds to give away:
- Alpine skiing, men’s team combined slalom
- Freestyle skiing, women’s freeski slopestyle
- Ski jumping, men’s normal hill individual
- Snowboarding, women’s big air
- Speed skating, women’s 1,000m
And here’s a peek at how that medal race is shaping up:
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