Downhiller Johnson Is Critically Injured

Billy Johnson, who predicted for weeks that he would win the 1984 Olympic downhill ski race and then did just that, was critically injured and hospitalized in a coma in Whitefish, Mont., Thursday after crashing in a downhill.

U.S. ski team spokesman Tom Kelly said Johnson was in “extremely critical condition” with “severe head trauma.”

Johnson, originally from Van Nuys, was unconscious when he was taken by helicopter to a Kalispell hospital 20 miles away. Moments before, spectators had heard him calling for help as he lay in the snow, bleeding from the head.

He fell face-first when his skis separated, then went through two restraining fences about halfway down the Big Mountain Resort run.

Johnson, 40, was in the midst of a comeback, having competed in regional competitions in a bid to compete at the World Cup level. He was considered a longshot to make next year’s Olympic team.

He was ranked 404th in the world downhill rankings and 577th in super-G.

“He came off a launch pad and executed the landing perfectly, then entered the corkscrew section,” said Kelly.

“It’s a right, left, right turn and he was coming into the second turn. The netting did its job but he did have a significant impact with the snow.”

In a career marked by frequent clashes with coaches and competitors, Johnson was more than once referred to as “skiing’s John McEnroe.”

Outrageous, arrogant, undisciplined--and sometimes downright unlawful--Johnson had difficulty fitting into the discipline of U.S. skiing after learning the sport as a 7-year-old on the slopes of Bogus Basin near Boise, Idaho.

As a teen, he lived a checkered life and ran with friends who enjoyed housebreaking and car theft. After one scrape with police, a lenient judge approved his exile to the Mission Ridge Ski Academy in Washington state.

His coach there, Dick Knowles, remembered years later Johnson working hard to reach international status, but added, “He was never the type of person to say thank you.”

Johnson had made the 1980 U.S. Olympic team in 1979 but was thrown off by coach Bill Marolt for being out of shape. After Marolt took him back in 1982, Johnson learned to form the best aerodynamic shape in wind tunnel training of any U.S. skier.

Johnson and a teammate, JoJo Webber, were kicked off the team again briefly in 1982, for having “too much fun.”

In the days before he won his gold medal at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, at 23, Johnson, like boxer Cassius Clay at Rome in 1960, walked about the Olympic athletes’ village at Sarajevo, assuring everyone within earshot that only he had a shot at the gold medal.

At a news conference an hour after his victory, he was asked what the win meant personally to him.

“Millions!” he said.

He spoke of a need for an agent.

“Heck, I bet Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s agent is probably over at my house right now.”

Tragedy struck the fun-loving Johnson and his wife, Gina, in 1991. His 13-month-old son, Ryan, fell into a hot tub at their Lake Tahoe home. Submerged for at least four minutes, the child died at a hospital after three weeks of intensive care.

But the tragedy never softened Johnson’s competitive zeal.

“I’m still the best on the mountain, wherever I go,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1993.

This year, after he was divorced, he had a tattoo put on his right biceps that read: “Ski to Die.”