From a Gold Medal to a Ring: Ski Star Gets Engaged at the Olympics

First an Olympic gold medal, now an engagement ring.

Following her performance in Thursday’s Olympic super-G race, Breezy Johnson’s boyfriend of more than two years, Connor Watkins, got down on one knee at the bottom of the ski hill in Italy. 

Tearfully, Johnson said yes. 

Along with the ring, Watkins handed Johnson a wood carving that included lyrics from the Taylor Swift song The Alchemy, “Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?” 

That prompted a response from the pop star herself, adding another layer to a moment that Johnson, probably, won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

“CONGRATULATIONS!!!” Swift wrote beneath Johnson’s Instagram post announcing the engagement. 

“Hey guys... meet Connor! My ex boyfriend! And current fiancé!!!” the caption of Johnson’s post read. “Thank you to everyone who made this moment possible. It was everything I ever dreamed of. Kind of like Connor!”

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Was Johnson counting on an Olympic proposal? She had a hunch, NBC reported, saying that she “may have told [Watkins] that I just always kind of had the dream of getting engaged at the Olympics.”

Now, that dream is real. 

Watkins, for his part, had been planning the proposal for a year and said it had “gone above and beyond our wildest imagination,” according to NBC. He had hoped to be able to get into the finish area to propose and do it the way he wanted.

“It turned out we could, and we're just super excited,” he said. 

The two met on a dating app, The Athletic reported, with Watkins admitting, perhaps unsurprisingly, that he was a little intimidated during their first date after learning that Johnson was the real deal. There aren’t too many Olympic ski racers of Johnson’s caliber to be found on Bumble, after all. 

Johnson’s other piece of hardware, her Olympic gold, came during the women’s downhill earlier in the Games. 

That day, she dropped sixth, eking out an early lead that held ahead of the silver medalist, Germany’s Emma Aicher. Sofia Goggia, of Italy, took third. The victory was big for Johnson, who had never won an Olympic medal before.

Alongside Mikaela Shiffrin, Johnson also placed fourth in the team combined, posting the event’s fastest time in the downhill leg. 

Her super-G outing was more challenging, though. No members of the American squad cracked the top ten and Johnson, after crashing, ended up with a “did not finish.”