Most athletes go to the Olympics, compete, fly home. Breezy Johnson went to Cortina d'Ampezzo and came back with a gold medal in three pieces, a fiancé she wasn't entirely expecting, and a viral exchange with the most famous pop star alive about sourdough bread and skiing technique.
Johnson is 30, from Jackson, Wyoming, and she races downhill, which if you have never watched it up close is the sporting equivalent of throwing yourself off a cliff on two planks at 85 miles an hour while wearing spandex and hoping for the best. She won the women's downhill on 8 February with a time of 1:36.10. Beat Germany's Emma Aicher by four hundredths of a second. Four hundredths. Blink and you've missed the margin twice over. It was her first Olympic medal. First for Team USA at these Games, too.
