Breezy Johnson surprisingly wins gold in the women's downhill

It is typical of such major events as world championships that the actual favorites come away empty-handed. This unwritten law was confirmed once again today in the women's downhill at the 2025 Alpine World Ski Championships in Saalbach, Austria. If you look at the Ski World Cup rankings, you will see such prominent names as Sofia Goggia, Federica Brignone and Lara Gut-Behrami, who would actually be contenders for the title, but today the grand dames of the women's downhill came away empty-handed. The race was held in glorious weather and perfect piste conditions. The American Breezy Johnson started the race with starting number 1. The American showed a flawless run and it was clear that the run would be enough to place her in the top 10, but what was it really worth? The German Kira Weidle-Winkelmann was already 1.64 seconds behind as the second runner. This already made it clear how good Johnson's running time was, but the favorites were still at the top. When the Czech Ester Ledecka, who had won the training, entered the race with number 5, it was clear that this would be a decisive moment. The intermediate time kept flashing green, but in the last two corners before the finish it was too far removed, which is why she lost 0.21 seconds to Johnson. Cornelia Hütter with starting number 7 was also unable to overtake Johnson, but ended up at the finish 0.34 seconds behind. It slowly dawned on everyone that Breezy Johnson had put in a great run. Lara Gut-Behrami, who was following behind, missed a gate and was eliminated from the race. Very annoying. The Austrian Mirjam Puchner followed with number 9, from whom not much was expected, but she had obviously caught the World Cup fever, because she was practically on the same level in all intermediate times. At the finish she was only 0.15 seconds behind. But now they were coming, the gold contenders, first and foremost Sofia Goggia with the number 12. But what was it, a completely botched run, was she too nervous about her fall in training? The Italian crossed the finish line with an incomprehensible gap of 1.97 seconds. There are no words for that, and neither was she. Neither the World Cup leader Federica Brignone, nor the Super G winner Stephanie Venier nor Lindesy Vonn could do anything to harm Breezy Johnson's best time. So she won somewhat surprisingly ahead of Mirjam Puchner and Ester Ledecka. That will be a satisfaction for the American, who was retroactively banned for 14 months in May 2024 due to missed doping controls and had to compete in the World Cup alone without a US team and had drawn a tough lot.