"Tops the list of any medal I've ever won" - Mikaela Shiffrin melts hearts with emotional toast for Breezy Johnson after World Championships win

Mikaela Shiffrin raised a heartwarming toast for her childhood teammate Breezy Johnson after the pair won the first-ever combined team event at the World Championships. It marked Shiffrin's 15th medal, while Johnson became a double world champion.

Shiffrin didn't initially plan to compete in the newly introduced event but changed her decision at the last moment on Monday. She was paired with Johnson, whom she has been racing with and against since she was 11 years old, and the pair won the gold in a combined time of 2:40.89s.

Team USA celebrated the victory with a drinks party, and Shiffrin raised the toast with an emotional speech for Johnson, who returned to skiing last December after a 14-month suspension before winning the first medals of her career in Saalbach.

" After at least 15 years of racing together and against each other, that's a unique thing in ski racing. You race individuals as competitors, but you also race together as teammates. I feel like we talked at that moment [when we met] about our hopes and dreams, and I think we connected specifically about feeling like we were a little bit lost in a world where young girls were not supposed to be as ambitious as we were,"

"Looking forward to this many years to where we both come, everything you overcomed to get here and a lot of this past year and a half, you had to do a lot of it on your own, and that's been unbelievable to watch from afar and now to watch up close. So grateful to be your teammate today, and thank you for a memory that tops the list of any medal I have ever won," Mikaela Shiffrin said

While Shiffrin was already emotional during her speech, Johnson was taken aback by Shiffrin's big compliment at the end and broke down in tears. The pair took each other in a long embrace, and skiing fans would hope to see them team up for the event's Olympic debut next year.

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"It’s hard for me to imagine my own path to the World Cup without you" - Breezy Johnson to Mikaela Shiffrin in 2020

Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson at the Audi FIS Alpine World Ski Championships - Source: Getty

Breezy Johnson made her World Cup debut two years after Mikaela Shiffrin won her first race in 2013. While the two are nearly of the same age, Johnson has credited Shiffrin for leading her to the World Cup and has claimed to have been inspired by the Olympic champion during her childhood as well.

"I just want to say that over the years we have both grown a lot. But it’s hard for me to imagine my own path to the World Cup without you," she wrote on Mikaela Shiffrin's birthday in 2020

"When we met I had been told for years that my intensity and drive in the sport ‘intimidated the other kids,’ and that I needed to ‘calm down and take this less seriously.’ Then I roomed with a quiet girl named Mikaela. She was driven, serious, and hardworking, and no one could stop talking about her. I had always watched World Cup racers but when I saw you I suddenly realized what a mini World Cup racer looked like," Johnson added

While Johnson has never won a World Cup race in her career, she became a two-time World Champion in two weeks in Saalbach and would be eager to carry forward the momentum into the next part of her career.