By Alan Baldwin
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Olympic downhill champion Breezy Johnson wants her broken gold medal back.
The U.S. Alpine skier told Reuters that the medal she won in Sunday’s race down Cortina d’Ampezzo’s Olimpia delle Tofane piste had been replaced after it broke.
“They couldn’t fix it so they gave me a new one,” she said in an interview.
“Although I’m actually curious, because then I think some of the later ones they were able to fix. So now I’m kind of wondering if maybe I can get the old one back fixed.”
Johnson was the first U.S. medallist of the Milano Cortina Games and it was also her first appearance on an Olympic podium.
But the medals have proved fragile and become a talking point of the first week of competition with athletes across several sports reporting breakages soon after wearing them.
Johnson said on Sunday she had been jumping in excitement when the medal broke, explaining that it was “not like crazy broken but it’s a little broken.”
U.S. teammate Jackie Wiles saw her bronze break after she jumped too enthusiastically following the team combined podium on Tuesday. She was also given a replacement.
Asked if her new medal was any different to the one that first hung around her neck, Johnson replied: “Well, the new one has not yet been engraved and obviously it’s not the one that I got originally.”
Would she like it back? “Yeah, if it’s fixed,” she said.
FUTURE AMBITION
The Milano Cortina Games may not be Johnson’s last chance at adding to her Olympic medal collection.
“My plan is definitely to try to continue for another Olympics,” said the 30-year-old, who was fastest on Tuesday’s combined downhill but missed a medal after teammate Mikaela Shiffrin was only 15th in the slalom run.
Johnson will race the super-G on Thursday, when she could become the first U.S. female skier to win both speed races at the same Games.
“I think the thing Beijing (2022) taught me is that you’re never guaranteed anything until you’re in the start,” she said.
“This sport is brutal and it can take your dreams away even at the last second. I want to keep skiing. I know that I haven’t hit my stride yet. And so many girls in Alpine skiing are really just finding their form in their early and mid 30s.”
Johnson missed the Beijing Games after qualifying and then being ruled out by injury after a fall in training for a Cortina downhill weeks before she had been due to go to China.
Teammate Lindsey Vonn, who broke a leg in Sunday’s downhill, won twice this season at the age of 41.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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