CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy -- American ski racer Breezy Johnson won the Olympic downhill Sunday with a hard-charging run on a day marred by teammate Lindsey Vonn's crash that saw her being taken off the mountain in a helicopter. Johnson was the sixth racer and found speed with a risk-taking trip along the iconic Olympia delle Tofana course on a sunny day in Cortina.
The sun rises late in Cortina d'Ampezzo, like everything else in this little alpine town. It's gone eight o'clock in the morning by the time the daylight has made it over the high peaks to the east, and it's another two hours from that before the Olympic day gets under way. It's slow out, as if everyone's still sleeping off the night before, when the town was out cheering for the athletes as they made their parade around the square.
The ravioli-type dish, also known as casunziei all'Ampezzana, consists of homemade half-moon shaped pasta filled with boiled beets, topped with a sauce of melted butter, Parmesan cheese and poppy seeds. It's a simple dish that harks back to the Alpine region's poorer past - long before Cortina transformed into a winter playground for the international jet set. Even in the coldest days of winter, local families had the ingredients in their cupboards.
A guard at a construction site near a 2026 Winter Olympic venue in the mountain resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo died during a freezing overnight shift, authorities have confirmed. Italy's infrastructure minister, Matteo Salvini, called for a full investigation into the circumstances of the 55-year-old worker's death. Italian media reported that the death occurred on Thursday while the worker was on duty at a construction site near Cortina's ice arena. Temperatures that night plunged to -12C (10.4F).
