On the Road with US Team Member Breezy Johnson

The following contribution was written by US Ski Team and JHMR sponsored. locally born and raised athlete Breezy Johnson. Breezy checked in with us from the road in Val-d’isere after her first World Cup podium finish. Since then, she’s placed two additional podiums, making her one of the strongest emerging forces on the Women’s World Cup Alpine Skiing circuit. Follow her @breezyjohnsonski while enjoying this recollection of Breezy’s during a big professional moment of ‘reckoning.’ 

Some moments in your life are moments of reckoning.  They make you look back on everything leading up to where you are.  Most people associate moments of reckoning as negative, but I believe that they need not always be. It’s just that we as humans often focus on the bad and therefore take more time to reflect after moments of hardship than of those of joy.  

 

I recently had one of those positive moments of reckoning. It was at the World Cup. As I was called up to stand on my first World Cup podium, I could hear the cheers of my team, standing a hundred feet away(as they must now, due to COVID-19precautions). They made me smile beneath my cloth mask, but they also reminded me of all of the people on my ‘team’ who could not be in that finish area. The silent voices that I knew, somewhere around the globe, were also cheering me on. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and maybe along that logic it takes a city to raise a professional athlete. This blog post for Jackson Hole is a compilation of those moments of impact and reckoning that amount to raising a professional athlete. 

To take proper stock in this moment of reckoning and how I got here, I first look to the beginning with my parents, without whom I may have never stepped on skis or developed a passion for the sport I love so dearly. My parents were avid skiers, ready to teach me, first on our driveway and then on the flat slopes of Teewinot at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. We never traveled to Hawaii or Disneyland for vacation when I was a child, but they passionately drove us to Whistler Blackcomb, Big Sky, and many more, because while the Tetons were home, the allure of other mountains had to be checked, though we of course always decided that home was best. They also taught me the value of hard work. Part of the appeal of ski racing was its difficulty and they taught me to embrace that. Ski racing is not for the faint of heart. 

I also look back on my years as a kid not knowing if what I was doing was enough. The coaches who worked with me and guided me deserve a massive thanks. The ones like Megan Gerety, who appreciated my thirst for improvement. The ones who put up with my fiery temper and helped shape me into a better person as well as an athlete. There were those who couldn’t understand my desires, who told me to calm down, who told me my dreams were too big and my skiing too poor. To them I can only say ‘I did it anyway.’ Not everyone will always support a dream. To those who supported me though, I cannot thank you enough, and say that a piece of all of my successes is yours too. 

In looking back on my years of improvement I remember the teammates along the way. They were a varied group but metal sharpens metal and they were certainly that. I thank them for letting me watch their skiing. I thank them for pushing me and teaching me.  Our U.S. Women’s speed team has worked as such a strong unit for so long it’s hard to say what I learned from whom. But I cannot thank this group enough. 

My moment of reckoning also reminded me of some of the toughest times in my life the past few years. You can’t stand in the shining sun and not remember the days when it was so dark you thought the light might never reach you again. Tearing my right ACL and then tearing my left PCL and MCL in 2018 and 2019, was gut wrenching, and I would be lying if I said there weren’t a lot of moments when I worried that I might never reach the podiums I was working so hard for. I had a choice in those tough times; wallow and worry, or work. I chose work even though I had no proof it would be worth it. To all the people who helped me believe, when I had lost hope, I owe you more than I can put into words. It is sometimes easier to trust that other people are right to believe in your crazy dreams than it is to believe in your crazy dreams yourself. So to those who kept believing, thank you. 

It’s funny because Covid kept my team away from me in that finish area, but in part because there were so few people in that finish that day, it reminded me of the people who were far away, as well as those near, that have impacted me with words, actions and lessons that will forever keep them close. The lack of cheers from strangers amplified the cheers of those closest to me, metaphorically and literally, who changed my life and brought me to this moment in my career. I hope one day we can all do it together again.