Q: In your ski racing career, you’ve competed and placed in the Olympics and World Championship. What has become your greatest memory or accomplishment in all your hard work?
A: I love racing so much so I think I am constantly surprised and have new great memories all the time. I think my greatest accomplishment is hard to pick just one. One of the things I am super proud of was how solidly I came back from injury. That wasn’t easy but it was cool to see it in the results. Another was being nominated athlete liaison by my teammates. It’s not really an athletic accomplishment but Athlete Liaisons are our version of team captains and I was nominated and voted Liaison by my teammates. Which is cool that they felt I was a good leader in that regard.
Q: If you had to choose, where would you say is your favorite resort to ski?
A: Jackson Hole is still the best resort I have ever been to. It’s just the best. Beyond that maybe Val d’Isere in France.
Q: How has training at Wright Training in Victor helped you through the pandemic? And how important is training in the gym to skiing career?
A: Wright was a big deal during the pandemic and a main reason I was able to accomplish so much last year (my best season to date). Using the gym in Victor helped me make gains in my strength and conditioning last summer, rather than going backwards, which many athletes did. It also kept me sane in a time of serious uncertainty in the world.
I think gym training is super important for skiing. It allows me to pull more radius and deal with high speeds. It also helps prevent injury and allows you to train more, which makes you better at skiing. I don’t know if gym training always wins the race but it can definitely make you lose it. And it’s easy money on the table. I can’t always ensure that I have the best technique (a lot of technique is established when you are young so you either have it or you don’t) but I can make sure that I work the hardest in the gym.
Q: In your career, you’ve suffered a fractured tibial plateau, a torn ACL, PCL, and MCL (did I miss anything!?). How did you overcome these injuries?
A: That’s all the major injuries. The PCL and MCL were torn together, the others were all separate. I think my times of injury were some of the hardest times in my life. I dealt with a lot of anxiety and depression when I couldn’t ski or race. I spent a lot of time in the gym, which helped me feel like I was working toward my goals of skiing, even if I couldn’t always see the results all the time. I lived recovery for almost two years (because my ACL injury went sort of back to back with my PCL and MCL). I worked incredibly hard in the gym doing everything and anything to try to improve there. I worked on my upper body, I set core and pull up goals to keep myself occupied and we hunted extremely hard for any advantage to the recovery game. We used eccentric loading on the “good” side, because of research about eccentric ’spill over effects’ we used BFR in a variety of ways, neurocognition to try to rewire my brain for return to snow. I don’t know what each one of these things did on its own but together they worked really well to get me back on snow.
Q: What else should your Teton Valley friends and neighbors know about Breezy Johnson?
A: I am always looking for fun adventures, specifically to high alpine lakes in the summer! It’s always about a new challenge and that is a fun one for me.
