Bill Johnson: Naughty American

SAN DIEGO (TNA) – Not enough Americans remember Bill Johnson, but they should. On February 16, 1984, the cocky young kid from Oregon shocked the sporting world and gave a big “eff-you!” to the European skiing establishment in the process.

Careening down the face of Mt. Bjelasnica at the Sarajevo Olympics, Johnson, 23, an ex-juvenile delinquent, won the men’s Olympic downhill.

Americans weren’t expected to win the downhill, you see, much less a Yank like Johnson. The United States had never won the downhill – in fact, it had never even medaled.

Then there was Johnson. The Portland native didn’t have the pedigree to win. He didn’t come up through the elite skiing academies or live out of the family ski house. He was a punk. As a teen, he was directionless, breaking into houses for kicks. He only picked up skiing because he was ordered to by a judge – as sentencing for stealing a car when he was 17.

As a racer, Johnson was just as raw, bombing down the course with reckless abandon, always on the brink of catastrophe. As someone who relied on fearlessness over finesse, he might get lucky, critics said, but he would never be elite.

Credit: Leo Mason/Action Plus/Icon SMI

Bill Johnson was as good at being an insufferable American as he was at skiing fast.

And the sentiment before Sarajevo was that Johnson had already used up all his luck. A month earlier, he had already stunned the skiing world by winning a World Cup downhill in Wengen, Switzerland. The run was thrilling, with Johnson at one point catching an edge and contorting wildly on one ski to avoid disaster.

Despite the victory, Johnson failed to rank in the top 10 in the downhill by the time the Olympics arrived. But rank didn’t matter to Johnson – he simply knew he was going to win. Upon his arrival at Sarajevo, the press corps asked his thoughts on the race, to which he famously quipped, “They should just hand (the gold medal) to me. Everyone else can fight for second.”

The hubris! the press cried.

Until he went out and actually won.

The victory marked the end of European hegemony in the downhill. For the Swiss, Italians, and Austrians, the event typically marked the coronation of the greatest skier in Europe, and by extension, the world. This time, though, the mighty European downhillers – including Austrian great Franz Klammer – found themselves looking up at the brash, unheralded Yank. The Europeans were mortified.

Johnson reveled in it all. After the race, the media asked Johnson what the victory meant to him. Never one to recite nationalist or patriotic rhetoric, Johnson, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, replied, “Millions! We’re talking millions!”

Johnson’s fame was as brief as his gold-medal run, though. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, captured crouching in mid-air beside the headline “Flat Out For Glory.” But then he faded, a victim of his own excess and impulsiveness.

He bought fast cars – a Porsche 911 and Audi Quattro – a speedboat, and a house in Malibu. For the next several years, he caroused like a rock star, gambling and drinking when he should have been training. His lifestyle, as well as abrasive personality, didn’t sit well with teammates on Team USA.

As Outside Magazine wrote in a 2002 profile, Johnson “drove fast, partied hard, shot guns, surfed at midnight, and in general carried on as if those clichéd extreme-sport adages—Rip it! Tear shit up!—were his holy credo.”

When his form declined, he found few allies on the U.S. Ski Team, and he failed to make the 1988 Olympic team. By the end of the 80s, his career was finished.

The only problem was, Johnson didn’t realize it. He took the 90s off, working as a “ski ambassador” for a resort in Colorado, then doing carpentry in California. In 2000, after more than a decade of drifting, Johson reckoned it was time to bag another gold and started racing again.

The outcome was disastrous. On March 22, 2001, during a World Cup training run, Johnson wiped out horrifically, hitting his head and suffering permanent brain damage.

Johnson was in a coma for three weeks. When he emerged, he had lost memory of the last six years and needed to learn simple motor skills. Unfortunately, he also lost what little maturity he had developed before the accident. Neural specialists say that he has the emotional capacity of a child.

And children can be very petulant. In 2005, Johnson was stopped for speeding and driving erratically near Portland, Oregon. When an officer asked to see his license, Johnson punched the officer in the face. He also dangled his gold medal out of the driver’s side window and taunted the officers, “Do you have one of these! Do you have one of these!”

The officers arrested him on assault and suspicion of drunk driving. Allegedly, though, his blood alcohol level came up 0.00 percent.

As of 2005, Johnson was living with his mother in Oregon, out of the public eye. For a brief moment in 1984, though, Bill Johnson loomed large in the American conscience, a standard-bearer for naughtiness and the indomitable American spirit. For that, he makes the Naughty American Hall of Fame.

Bill Johnson Avoids Disaster To Win World Cup Downhill