USA’s downhill threat Breezy Johnson has learned to live with doubt and fear
In December 2024, Breezy Johnson glided into the starting gate on the Stifel Birds of Prey downhill course atop Colorado’s Beaver Creek, a sight for sore eyes and a bundle of nerves.“The anxiety will always be there until I’m in the downhill gate,” the 30-year-old said at Team USA’s pre-Olympics media summit in October.“Like, at no point can [I tell myself], I’ve got this thing.”Out of World Cup action for 14 months after whereabouts failures, she dropped on to Birds of Prey as bib No 32 in the 45-racer field – all women for the first time in the history of the legendary venue.With a few bends of her reconstructed knees, she snapped through the timing wand, charged through the Abyss (one of Birds of Prey’s steepest pitches) and kept carving her way through the 1.
7-mile (2,7km) drop’s icy chop,Altogether, it was a solid run for Johnson, a 13th-place finish on home snow to restart her World Cup scoring streak,And just like that, America’s would-be standard bearer of the slopes was at it again,Attention will be on Johnson again this weekend when she competes in the Olympic women’s downhill at the Milano Cortina Games.
Since a 2020-21 breakout of four World Cup downhill podiums that rocketed her to second in the world rankings, the Wyoming-born, Idaho-raised Johnson – who legally changed her birth name, Breanna, to her nickname, Breezy – has been heralded a global threat, next in the succession line of scarily talented American skiers behind Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin.Johnson’s top-14 finishes in her Pyeongchang Olympics debut in 2018, at the ripe age of 22, only seemed to underscore the threat.But like many in her chosen profession, she would fall victim to the unavoidable hazards of her daredevil sport and suffer further for her undimmable aggression.But until recently, it was her body paying the steepest price.Three years into her World Cup career came a broken leg; within nine months, ligaments shredded in both knees, forcing Johnson to withdraw from the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“As athletes, we’re used to really good control over our bodies,” she said earlier this week in Italy.“We can do extreme athletic events, and then suddenly you can’t even, you know, turn a muscle on and walk.” The injuries were all pretext for her hardest hit yet – not to bone or tendon, but to her reputation.World Cup skiers must file pre-determined locations and 60-minute windows daily for random drug testing.But Johnson left her testers hanging on three separate occasions (once in 2022 and twice in 2023), triggering an automatic World Anti-Doping Agency violation that the US Anti-Doping Agency upgraded to a 14-month ban.
(Prior to that, she had never failed a drug test.) In a May 2024 Instagram post, Johnson apologized for disappointing her fans and called the missed tests “a human error,” added that she was “paying the consequences,” and vowed: “See you at Birds of Prey!”Johnson has long been open about skiing’s psychological toll – self-doubt, perfectionism, fear of failure and the intense therapy addressing it all.She has talked about the inner voice that whispered during her long stretches off the slopes – “maybe you suck” – and the way fear rides the chairlift with her, always poised to pitch her into existential crisis.Recalling her suspension, she told the Washington Post: “You feel like a criminal.It was very lonely.
” But instead of letting the time away spiral her, she turned it into self-improvement fuel.Drawing on mental toughness forged through prior injury rehabs, she trained by herself and watched rivals sharpen their numbers from afar.“At the end of the day I want to win a gold medal,” she said in October when asked about the growing field of potential world-beaters.“I want to be the best out of everybody, not just in the US.”As promised, she served that reminder at Birds of Prey, thrilling fans with a solid World Cup reentry.
From there, Johnson kept the momentum going: first and third in super-G at the European Cup in Sarntal, Italy, podium bronze at a World Cup tune-up in Kvitfjell, Norway.Then, three months after Beaver Creek, she answered her biggest personal challenge yet at the 2025 world championships in Austria, pairing with longtime friend Shiffrin for the US’s first-ever team alpine victory and topping the women’s downhill podium for her first individual worlds gold.“I was psyched because I knew that I had skied my best,” she said afterward.“I’m just going to enjoy this because I’ve had a lot of moments that weren’t like this.”The results cemented Johnson’s place on Team USA and as Shiffrin’s speed complement.
And now with Vonn’s recent ACL injury adjusting American medal hopes (not that her box jump showcase wasn’t impressive), Johnson provides a bit of insurance, too – ironic given her own medical history,With everything to ski for in Cortina, Johnson is charging free again – this time with no headwind in sight,“At this point, I’m like, you know, your next Olympics is definitely not guaranteed,” she said this week,“You never know when the journey will end, and so you have to seize the opportunities that are in front of you,”
Dow Jones hits 50,000 milestone amid tech gains and hopes of lower interest rates
The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 50,000 for the first time, as ballooning tech valuations, robust corporate earnings and hopes of lower interest rates drive it to new highs.Leading stock markets on Wall Street came under pressure earlier this week as technology stocks fell amid scrutiny of extraordinary levels of investment into artificial intelligence.Cryptocurrencies including bitcoin have also suffered sharp falls in recent days, although they recovered some lost ground on Friday.But US equities have been rallying for months as investors largely shrugged off geopolitical tensions and grew increasingly optimistic about the economy.The Dow closed at 50,015
Amazon shares tumble as $200bn AI rollout plan worries markets – as it happened
Amazon’s shares are tumbling in early trading, though, as investors balk at its plans for an artificial intelligence spending blitz.Amazon’s shares have dropped by over 9%, a day after it announced plans to spend $200bn on artificial intelligence and robotics this year.Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy sounded bullish last night, declaring:“With such strong demand for our existing offerings and seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites, we expect to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across Amazon in 2026, and anticipate strong long-term return on invested capital.”But as flagged earlier (9.59am), investors fear companies are wasting their money, given the hundreds of billions of dollars being committed to AI rollout this year
Tell us: how have you been affected by falling cryptocurrency prices?
Bitcoin sank to its lowest value in more than a year this week, faling to $63,000 on Thursday, about half its all-time peak of $126,000 in October 2025It’s part of a wider shock to crypto prices. The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, has faced losses of more than 30% this year alone.The months-long dip in cryptocurrency prices has tanked shares of companies that have increasingly invested in bitcoin, exacerbating broader stock market jitters. CoinGecko data shows that the global crypto market has lost $2tn in value since early October. Meanwhile, gold has soared in value as investors seek safe haven assets
Hail our new robot overlords! Amazon warehouse tour offers glimpse of future
At its new Stone Mountain, Georgia, facility, Roomba-like robots shuffle between stacks, another adds shipping labels while another arranges packages in palletsOne of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don’t need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon’s hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.Between the main doors and the entrance security gate, I paced and paced after being told I would have to wait for the tour guide to collect me and other guests for a tour of the 640,000-sq-ft, four-story warehouse.Amazon offers tours to the public at 28 of its 1,200 US warehouses – a recruiting and public-relations tool to boost brand trust and address criticisms of poor working conditions. It was something to consider as I wound up having to go in the parking lot, propping open my rental car door for privacy
Winter Olympics 2026: opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro and beyond – as it happened
And with that, 60,000 spectators at the San Siro slip into the night. Time for me to go bed too. The games proper start tomorrow, with Great Britain taking on Canada at 9.05am in the mixed curling. Thanks for your messages during this long, whacky, but quite lovely opening ceremony
Intimate and enormous: Milano Cortina opening ceremony tries something different
The showpiece to kick off the Games happened across multiple venues but politics and protests were also presentThe most striking thing about the opening ceremony isn’t a single prop, celebrity cameo or piece of choreography: it’s the geography. For the first time, an Olympic opening ceremony in effect happened across multiple live venues all at once, with Milan, Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo linked into one narrative structure. It felt less like a show in a stadium and more like watching a country perform itself in real time. The organising concept – “Armonia”, the idea that different elements can move together without losing their identity – isn’t just branding. It shapes how the ceremony actually functioned
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