Olympic Gold Medallist Breezy Johnson Offers to Teach Taylor Swift Skiing in Exchange of Sourdough

Most athletes go to the Olympics, compete, fly home. Breezy Johnson went to Cortina d'Ampezzo and came back with a gold medal in three pieces, a fiancé she wasn't entirely expecting, and a viral exchange with the most famous pop star alive about sourdough bread and skiing technique.

Johnson is 30, from Jackson, Wyoming, and she races downhill, which if you have never watched it up close is the sporting equivalent of throwing yourself off a cliff on two planks at 85 miles an hour while wearing spandex and hoping for the best. She won the women's downhill on 8 February with a time of 1:36.10. Beat Germany's Emma Aicher by four hundredths of a second. Four hundredths. Blink and you've missed the margin twice over. It was her first Olympic medal. First for Team USA at these Games, too.

Then the medal broke.

She was bouncing around on the podium, the ribbon snapped, and her gold hit the deck in three bits. She held the wreckage up for the press pack with a grin and told them, 'I don't know that the Italians are known for their engineering.' She got a replacement. She is keeping both. She wants to knit a pouch for the broken one because she hand-knits a new hat or headband before every single race as a superstition.

The Hill That Took Her Knee and Gave It Back

The thing about Johnson winning gold at Cortina is that Cortina nearly ended her career.

Same course. January 2022. Training run. She crashed, ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, and missed the Beijing Olympics entirely. At the time she posted on Instagram that she'd be back 'to the hill that stole this Olympic dream from me for another shot at that gold medal.' The sort of thing athletes say and you nod politely and think, well, we'll see.

Four years later she did it. On the same slope. Which is either poetic or slightly mad, depending on your tolerance for sports narratives that feel a bit too neat.

And Lindsey Vonn was there. The 41-year-old skiing legend, wearing bib 13, trying for a second Olympic downhill gold 16 years after her first. She crashed seconds into her run. Got airlifted off the mountain. The crowd at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre went quiet. A course hold dragged on for 30 minutes while medical staff worked. Johnson was already in the leader's chair. She sat there, watching her friend and teammate get stretchered off the slope that had wrecked her own knee four years earlier, not knowing if her time would hold or if the whole day would fall apart. She cried. On and off, for over an hour.

Her time held.

'If you're going through hell, you keep walking because you don't want to just sit around in hell,' she told NPR afterwards. 'And sometimes when you keep going, maybe you'll make it back to the top.'

A Proposal at the Finish Line

Four days after winning gold, Johnson crashed out of the women's super-G on 12 February. Not the ending she wanted. But when she skied down to the finish area, her boyfriend Connor Watkins was waiting on one knee.

Watkins, a construction professional from Georgia, proposed with a blue sapphire ring and a wooden keepsake box engraved with a line from Swift's 2024 song The Alchemy: 'Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?'

The couple met on Bumble roughly two and a half years ago. Watkins had no idea Johnson was an elite skier until about 10 minutes into their first date. 'I was a little taken aback,' he told ESPN.

Johnson shared photos of the proposal on Instagram with the caption: 'Hey guys... meet Connor! My ex boyfriend! And current fiancé!!!'

That was when Swift got involved.

'Where's the Trophy? He Just Comes Running Over to Me'

Swift, 36, spotted the post and dropped a comment quoting her own lyrics from The Alchemy. 'Where's the trophy? He just comes running over to me,' she wrote. 'CONGRATULATIONS!!!'

Johnson's reply went viral within hours.

'I don't know what's better Olympic gold or this comment,' she wrote. 'Sourdough engagement gift please???? Would love to teach you to ski.'

The sourdough bit wasn't random. Swift has been open, quite relentlessly open, about her baking obsession. On an August 2025 episode of fiancé Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast, she told listeners: 'We're very deep in a sourdough obsession that has taken over my life. I am really talking about bread 60 per cent of the time now.'

Kelce, for his part, joked on sister-in-law Kylie Kelce's Not Gonna Lie podcast on 6 February that he 'broke Taylor's chair with the weight I gained from her sourdough'. He added: 'Good gut health, though.'

So when Johnson asked for bread in exchange for a turn on the slopes, fans understood the reference. And they loved it.

Kylie Kelce Wants In

The exchange didn't stop with Swift. When Johnson appeared on Kylie Kelce's podcast, the host shared her own failed skiing story, a trip to Aspen with husband Jason Kelce where there were no bunny hills, and asked if she could tag along.

'Needless to say, can I join your ski lesson?' Kylie asked.

'Of course,' Johnson replied.

Whether Swift herself will take the lesson is another matter. She is reported to be a regular at the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana, which suggests she might not be starting from scratch. Mind you, there's a difference between a holiday ski and having Breezy Johnson shouting instructions at you from the bottom of a black run.

The Road That Got Johnson to Cortina

The gold medal was the feel-good story it looked like on the surface, but the road to it was rather longer and rougher than the broadcast let on.

Johnson crashed during a training run at Cortina in January 2022 and ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament. She missed the Beijing Olympics entirely. At the time, she posted on Instagram that she would return 'to the hill that stole this Olympic dream from me for another shot at that gold medal.'

Four years later, on the same course, she did it. She is the second American woman to win Olympic downhill gold, after Lindsey Vonn in Vancouver in 2010. Vonn, 41, was racing in Cortina on the same day Johnson won, wearing bib 13. She crashed seconds into her run and was airlifted off the mountain. The 30-minute delay that followed meant Johnson sat in the leader's chair for over an hour and a half, crying intermittently, not knowing if her time would hold.

It held.

'If you're going through hell, you keep walking because you don't want to just sit around in hell,' Johnson said. 'And sometimes when you keep going, maybe you'll make it back to the top.'

Gold, a Ring, and a Loaf of Bread

Johnson left the 2026 Winter Olympics with a gold medal (broken and repaired), a fiancé, and a standing invitation to bake for one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. She told PEOPLE on 17 February that Swift's comment 'was not something that I ever expected. It was really cool seeing her just love love.'

Wedding plans are in the early stages. Johnson said she'd like a ceremony in Jackson in the autumn. No word yet on whether the sourdough will arrive in time for the reception.