Other athletes have won more gold medals at these Milano Cortina Olympics than American ski racer Breezy Johnson, who finished first in the women’s Olympic downhill competition on Feb. 8. For example, her counterpart on the men’s side—Switzerland’s Franjo von Allmen—has three: he swept the downhill, team combined, and super-G.
Still, has anyone had a better Olympics than Johnson? The Jackson Hole native won one of the most prestigious races at the Games, as the downhill is sort of like the 100-m dash at the Summer Games. What’s more, Johnson, 30, won her Olympic title on the same mountain in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where she crashed before the Beijing Games: she tore her ACL and missed those Olympics. Two days after her downhill victory, Johnson skied the fastest time on the downhill portion of the team combined competition (Mikaela Shiffrin’s subpar slalom run cost the Johnson-Shiffrin pairing a medal).
On Thursday, Johnson crashed out of the super-G race. But her day ended on the highest of notes. Her boyfriend, Connor Watkins, proposed to her at the bottom of the Cortina slope. Johnson said yes.
The morning after her whirlwind day, Johnson talked to TIME about her life-changing Games, the mixed emotions of winning a downhill on the same day teammate Lindsey Vonn broke her leg in a scary crash, and her ski-racing future.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity).
We’re speaking at 9 a.m. Italy time the morning after your now-fiancé proposed. Your Olympics ended yesterday. You have a gold medal and now an engagement ring. Weren’t you up late celebrating? Shouldn’t we be having this conversation at 2 in the afternoon?
My family knows I am early to bed, early to rise. I would have loved to have stayed up superlate. We stayed up until what I thought was late, which was like 10, talking.
How did you celebrate?
We did an Italian tradition. You bring a bunch of your family and friends together and you have a little party….
