Breezy Johnson joins U.S. skiing greats with third podium this season

By OlympicTalkJan 9, 2021, 8:51 AM EST

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On Saturday, Breezy Johnson became the fourth U.S. female Alpine skier to make three World Cup podiums in one season in the last 15 years.

The others: Olympic champions Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Mikaela Shiffrin.

Johnson, a 24-year-old coming back from three significant leg injuries, finished third in a downhill in St. Anton, Austria.

Olympic champion Sofia Goggia of Italy won her second straight World Cup downhill, this time by a whopping .96 of a second over Austrian Tamara Tippler. Full results are here.

Johnson joined Goggia as the only women to make the podium in all three World Cup downhills so far this season. Johnson also finished third in Val d’Isere, France, on Dec. 18-19.

“This has been coming on for a while,” Johnson said on ORF. “I have a lot of confidence right now.”

Before this season, Johnson’s top accolade was placing seventh in the PyeongChang Olympic downhill as the youngest U.S. speed racer. That result came 11 months after suffering a tibial plateau fracture in a World Cup Finals crash.

Johnson tore her right ACL in a September 2018 training crash and missed the entire season. She then tore her left PCL and MCL in a June 2019 giant slalom training fall. She showed Vonn-like resilience in returning last season — on about five days of training — and grabbing a pair of fifth-place downhill finishes.

Now, she’s the world’s third-ranked downhiller behind Goggia and Swiss Corinne Suter. Johnson can take aim at her first top 10 in a super-G in St. Anton on Sunday (live stream information here).

“I’m still not quite there with super-G as much,” she said. “I think it’s the hardest event. One day I hope to be really good at super-G.”

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Ski jumping World Cup returns to U.S. for first time since 2004

Associated PressSep 22, 2022, 9:55 AM EDT

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Ski Jumping’s top circuit is returning to the United States for the first time in nearly two decades.

The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) men’s ski jumping World Cup will be held in February in Lake Placid, New York.

Ski jumping’s last World Cup in the U.S. was in 2004 in Park City, Utah. The circuit has not been in North America since 2009 in Vancouver.

“This is a game-changer for our organization,” USA Nordic CEO Adam Provost said “The opportunity to bring in the best ski jumpers in the world to Lake Placid will give our sport a platform for growth that we haven’t had in close to 20 years.”

Organizers were looking for a venue to host the World Cup after they planned to hold the event in Iron Mountain, Michigan, an option that became unfeasible last month.

Lake Placid, which hosted the 1980 and 1932 Winter Olympics, became an attractive alternative because the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority recently invested millions to make its ski jumping complex world class.

“Having the World Cup back on U.S. soil is very important in developing the sport of Ski Jumping in this country, and across the world,” USA Nordic men’s and women’s ski jumping coach Anders Johnson said.

Only one American, Anders Haugen, has earned an Olympic ski jumping medal and that was at the first Winter Olympics in 1924. Haugen left the Games without any hardware, but 50 years later was awarded bronze after a scoring error was confirmed.

In an attempt to improve the chances the U.S. can compete with the world’s best ski jumpers, USA Nordic Sport began a partnership last month with Norway’s governing body in the sport. American and Norwegian national ski jumping teams will share coaches, training facilities, sports science data and efforts to attract sponsors as part of a four-year agreement.

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Max Whitlock, Olympic gymnastics champion, not on British team for world championships

By OlympicTalkSep 22, 2022, 9:48 AM EDT

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Max Whitlock, a six-time Olympic gymnastics medalist, is not on the British team for next month’s world championships in Liverpool.

Whitlock, 29, said on July 28 that he stopped training for 10 months after the Tokyo Games, where he won a second consecutive pommel horse gold.

“I needed to take time off,” he said on the BBC’s coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where he also did not compete.

Whitlock did say then that if the Tokyo Olympics had been held in 2020, he would have been able to compete at the 2022 Commonwealths.

Whitlock won at least one medal at every Olympics and world championships from 2012 through Tokyo before missing last fall’s worlds.

The British men’s team for Liverpool instead is led by 2019 World parallel bars champion Joe Fraser.

The top three teams at worlds qualify spots for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nine more spots will be available at 2023 Worlds.

Great Britain was fourth at the Tokyo Games, one spot ahead of the U.S. Olympic champion Russia was unable to qualify for worlds while banned from international competition due to the war in Ukraine.

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