Breezy Johnson turned 30 a couple weeks ago and celebrated like many Alpine skiers do.

“I did some laundry,” she said with a laugh. “Oh, and my boyfriend sent me flowers.”

When you’re a professional skier competing on the highest level, milestone life events take a different shape — or are missed altogether. Weddings, funerals, births and, yes, 30th birthdays. 

Coming off a World Cup event in Tarvisio, Italy, Johnson was on the road for her big day with the “family” she spends most of her time with: the U.S. Alpine skiing speed team. 

They took Breezy out to dinner and played a game of “roses and thorns,” sharing highlights and challenges from the past year — the past decade too.

“I’ve had some real big highs and some real big lows,” the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, native shared.

As a medal contender, she was forced to miss the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing after injuring her knee just three weeks prior to the Opening Ceremony. In 2022, she was suspended for 14 months due to a whereabouts violation.

Then 2025 saw multiple world championship victories for Johnson, who earned gold in the prestigious downhill and the newly formed team combined (with Mikaela Shiffrin), which will make its Olympic debut at the Milan Cortina Games.

The good, the bad, the uncomfortable. Breezy is here for it. And she's not afraid to plunge into any part of her story, like it's the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre downhill that boasts a starting altitude above 7,500 feet.

As she revs up to compete in her second Winter Olympics, Johnson spoke with NBCOlympics.com about the bond the speed team has developed, the time she considered quitting, hunting for Olympic medals, and more.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

I imagine that skiing in the same direction, so to speak, is kind of interesting when it’s such an individual sport. But you’re also on a team. Can you talk about that dichotomy a bit?

Johnson: I've been on the World Cup team for 10 years now. If you would have told me in my early 20s that by the time I hit 30, the team would be the best, not just skiing-wise, but also camaraderie-wise, I don't know that I would have believed you because we had a really good team back then. I didn't think that it could really get better. So it's cool to see that and be a part of it.

There's definitely something interesting about the team and the individual thing. You have to find a really good balance. Being competitors, at the end of the day, we all want to win. This sport can’t have ties, and realistically, there's only space for one on the top of the podium. But then it’s also important to support each other and try to make each other better, figure out how to be the best skiers we can be.

How do you balance that if you have your own personal priorities? Trying to win and being a good teammate?

Johnson: It sounds kind of basic, but we have — it's not like a spoken rule — but it's a kind of rule on our team that if you are gonna go do something with at least two members of the team, you need to invite everyone.  I've been on other teams, and I've heard from other teams about people being like, we need our space from so and so. There's none of that. And we try to actually have conversations and talk to each other about how we want to be supported when things go poorly.

Some people, when they have a bad race, they really want to talk about it. They want somebody to listen to them and hear them out in the finish. Other people want to go lick their wounds by themselves. Like, we have actual conversations about what type of person each person is.

After you have a disappointing race, would you say you like talking to people or going off on your own?

Johnson: If I’m injured, I'm very much a "please let me lick my wounds" person. Let me figure my s--- out by myself.  If I’m disappointed from a race I'm a lot more like, let's talk about it. Jackie [Wiles] and I have been really close. We commiserate about races with hard conditions or like how we got f----- by the light. And that’s really nice. 

We were talking a couple of weeks ago, and she was really down on herself in Val d’sere. It sucks because I know she’s so much better of a skier than 15th place and it’s hard when you don't have anything to show for it.  And then she podiumed in Zauchensee, and I was like, see! There it is. It’s still under there. You might not podium for like two years and you think maybe it's never gonna happen again. Then suddenly it pops back up.

After those initial downhill races in St. Moritz earlier this season, you mentioned on Instagram that you had hurt your back and it was the worst pain of your life. Compared to when you posted that, how is your back feeling now?

Johnson: I got an injection at Thanksgiving, and it was starting to feel a little better. I was like, okay, maybe this is working. It's not gonna be perfect, but it's getting better. I trained for two days, and the pain was back on the third day. I was trying to do super-G, and I couldn't turn. I couldn't do anything, and it was back to as bad as it had been right before St. Moritz.

I went to our team physician who had been helping me through it, and I was like, can we try something else for the pain management? And he was like, sure, we can try Indomethacin. It's normally for gout, but we can try it. I used it in St. Moritz, and that was really the only reason I was able to get through it.

Still, in the leadup, I would wake up in the morning, I couldn't do anything. I would take it. I would do PT at four in the morning. By seven in the morning I could kind of do a body weight squat. Then I would go up and, like, by the time I got done with inspection, I was a little bit okay. And then I would race, and then it would be back to being, like, horrible in the finish.

So I was really struggling through St. Moritz mentally. As I got to the last day of the racing there, my back was starting to get a little bit better. I was hopeful that with a few days off, it would actually get better, and it did. So the medication worked. I went into Val d’lsere, it was a lot better. And then by the end of Val d’lsere, I could stop taking the medication. You can't take it for super long because it'll destroy your kidneys, and so I stopped. But since the end of Christmas break, my back has been 100 percent. It was a very abrupt turnaround. I don't know of anybody else who's ever taken Indomethacin. It was a miracle drug.

Back in 2022, you injured your knee a couple weeks before the Olympics and had to miss the Games. Your teammate, Lauren Macuga, tore her ACL right before the start of the season, and she's going to miss the Winter Olympics. Have you spoken to her about that at all since it happened?

Johnson: Definitely missing the Games was brutal for me in 2022, but in those times, it can be hard hearing somebody who's like, well, I know that this is bad, but I also went through this, and it’ll be okay. Sometimes you just want to be sorry for yourself. So I've tried to support Lauren in other ways. Talking to her, I know that she's working incredibly hard, but it's definitely brutal. I sent her flowers a couple weeks ago. I think a lot of it's about continuing to catch up with people. She's also been a little bit in the "I want to go lick my wounds in a corner" though, and I think it's important to let people do that.

Something you mentioned before is that you've either attended or hosted dinner parties with injured athletes to commiserate and support one another. Is there a memory from one of those parties that sticks out to you as being particularly funny or cathartic? 

Johnson: It was kind of funny because in 2022 they didn't want to give me my Olympic uniform. I fought a little bit on it, and they sent me most things. They never sent me a ring or some of the other things, but they sent me a bunch of stuff. And I remember I had a dinner party and I was like, what do you want, what do you want?

A lot of the people there had gotten injured before they could qualify for the Games, which is also tough too, because I had objectively qualified for the Games and then was named to the team and then had to withdraw. But so many people, they're, like, not even part of the team out of no fault of their own.

You’ve talked a lot about the love you have for skiing, but that skiing doesn't love you back, in terms of some of the injuries you've sustained over the years. If your relationship with skiing is not a two-way street, what keeps you coming back for more?

Johnson: There are a lot of things that bring me joy about skiing, but it isn't a person. It doesn’t care about me, and it’s important to realize that. If you get into a risky situation and you're about to hit the net, there's nothing that's going to move in and save you. You have to protect yourself. But that doesn't mean that you can't find joy in doing it.

It’s kind of a balance that a lot of millennials are trying to find with jobs. If you open a floral shop and you love making floral arrangements, that's amazing, and you'll always find joy in that. But just because you love doing floral arrangements doesn't mean your flower shop is guaranteed to succeed. The floral industry can't love your back. You just need to do everything you can to make your business succeed.

I think it's the same with skiing. I have to acknowledge that if I get in a risky situation, if I go off of a jump wrong, if I do something badly, I'm just as likely to get hurt as the next person. That's all just physics.

But there's also something beautiful in that. To love something that will inevitably end. To love something that cannot love you back, but still dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to it is incredible. I'm gonna put everything I have into it every day. And when you know that things will end, that things will go badly, I think that also opens you up to enjoy every moment that it's going well.

You're not thinking it’s guaranteed that this will happen forever. I am making this happen every day, that is so impressive of me, and I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts because who knows if it’ll be here next week or next month or next year.

It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, in a sense? 

Johnson: Exactly. I remember a really good friend of mine, she dislocated both of her knees in racing. And I remember in high school, I told her that if she worked hard enough, she could come back, and she didn’t. And I was like, oh s---. Like, you can work as hard as you possibly can, and it still doesn't work out sometimes.

So many people are so scared to even try. To live that bravely is really impressive. And that to me has always been what defines winning. You go out there every day, you know things might go badly, but here I am on live television, willing to make a fool of myself while doing the best I can.

With some of the major injuries you've had, were there ever any points you considered walking away?

Johnson: I’ve thought about it but not after an injury. I thought about quitting after I got suspended for the whereabouts issue. In my experience, it felt like you didn't deserve to speak, be around, participate in the system with these athletes, compete. Basically you should retire.

I thought a lot about my reputation. Like, when you’re a kid in school, growing up, what do you want? You want to be the best. But you don’t actually want to be the best. You want to have the reputation of being the best. You want to have that when you go back to your back to your group, back to your hometown. I worried that in that moment my reputation was ruined forever. And if my reputation was ruined forever, why would I go back and ski? If I come back and win everything, everybody forever is going to be like, Oh, well, maybe she was a cheat. Maybe she didn't really deserve any of that. Should we celebrate her? What if it's all a lie? 

I had always prided myself on doing it with my whole heart, and doing it knowing that I could work as hard as I possibly could and not win. There was no reason for me to cheat because I'm out here trying to figure out how good I can possibly be. If I put in all the work despite everything, I just want to look back and be like, I gave 100 percent to that sport. This is how good I got. Because if I did that, I knew that anything else that happened was out of my control.  So I view fair play and doing it cleanly as super important. And then to be accused of basically the worst thing, which is to be a fraud and a cheat, was devastating. And I was like, if I don’t have my reputation, if I can't return with my reputation, then what is the point?

It took some time to realize that I could still have a good reputation. And I could try to show that people who are good and kind can also make mistakes. And then I also thought that if I leave the sport, then everybody's gonna question me forever, like well she got accused of it, and then just left.  I thought that if I were to quit, it would be acknowledging that I did something wrong. I worried that it would hurt my reputation more than if I came back. But then also countless people reached out to me that were like, Oh my gosh, I missed a test too and it was horrible. It feels so wrong what you're going through. 

Hearing that from other people made me realize that maybe my reputation is not ruined. Maybe I can still do some good in this sport.

That was the only time that I considered quitting.

As the defending downhill world champion, do you feel, or have you ever felt, like you're the fastest skier in the world?

Johnson: Not yet. I've long stated that it's my goal to one day win the downhill World Cup title, and I haven't done that yet. Whoever wins that title is the undisputed best downhill skier in the world. I've never led those standings, nor have I ever won the title at the end of the year. There have been times when I was verging on it: last year when I won the world championships, in 2022 right before I got hurt. So I know I have the skills, and I know I'm right there, so it's just about putting it down on race day.

What do you think it's going to take to level up a notch from where you are right now? 

Johnson: I think I’m at that level of the top skiers. There's a lot going on behind the scenes with the skis and the wax right now. I’m figuring out how to make myself a little bit better every day and then be able to show it on race day and of course at the Olympics. 

It's also a very, very competitive field. Apart from Lindsay [Vonn] (USA), there hasn't been anybody that’s been consistently on top. Even Lindsey’s lost more races than she’s won at this point. So it's just really competitive. It's all about having the right skiing, having all the pieces put together on the right day and the right time. I haven't quite had all of them come together at once. Like, I've had times when the skiing’s been really fast, but the weather didn't go my way.

It's just about having all those things on the right day, and that's really challenging right now because it's so competitive, but it's also awesome for the fans.

You're about to compete in the Winter Olympics in Cortina, the place you injured your knee before the last Winter Olympics. Do you feel like this is a full-circle moment for you, or do you not think about it that way?

Johnson: Yeah, it's definitely been a long journey, and it's not over. After last time, I will not trust that I’ll have the chance to make it full circle until I’m there, in that start gate, ready to do it, fully healthy. 

I think I know how to ski there, I know what to do there. It’s a hill that I am very good at, which I think is sometimes why it's been so punishing to me. My ability to generate speed there, it's led to some of my biggest mistakes, if that makes sense. So I feel good going there, I feel like I have a really good plan, but you’ve got to run the race.

This might sound like a dumb question, but what would you define as success for yourself at the Winter Olympics?

Johnson: I feel like being at the Olympics, it’s about becoming an Olympian, being among the best that have ever competed on the world stage and winning medals. I’ve done the part where I went there, I’ve competed with the best, but I don’t have a medal.  Hopefully this doesn’t happen, but I’ll have to find success in the failure if I don’t get a medal. But that’s what I’m there for. To compete with the best and fight for medals.

The Olympics are funny, because I can tell you who was 4th place at the last Olympics in downhill, and I can tell you who was 4th place in PyeongChang, but pretty much nobody else could. Big fans can tell you who the five best skiers from a season were. People can tell you that sort of stuff. But who got 4th at the Olympics? Nobody remembers. 

Everyday I'm working to be better than I was the day before, and if that means going from 5th to 4th, then it’s 5th to 4th.

It’s better to have tried and failed, then never to have tried it all. I'm willing to put those big goals out there because anybody who would scoff at me on the day of the Olympics and be like, oh, Breezy was so close. She could have gotten a medal for Team USA, but there she was 4th. And it’s like, well where were you? Get back to me when you qualify for the Olympics and win a medal and we’ll talk [laughs].