One moment, she was tangled in fencing at the bottom of a super-G course. Next, she was wiping away tears as a ring slid onto her finger.
According to the New York Post, Breezy Johnson’s week at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy delivered both triumph and turbulence.
The American skier captured gold in the downhill on Sunday, earning her first Olympic medal. Days later, her super-G run ended in a crash — but the morning didn’t end there.
Shortly after exiting the speed-building chute during Thursday’s race in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the 30-year-old caught her right pole on a gate and lost her balance. She skied off course and into the catch fence before getting back on her feet.
About an hour later, at the base of the mountain, her boyfriend, Connor Watkins, was waiting.
Surrounded by members of the U.S. ski team, Watkins proposed. He recited lyrics from Taylor Swift’s 2024 song “The Alchemy” before presenting Johnson with a ring featuring blue and white sapphires set in white gold.
“It felt fitting to kind of combine two of my loves,” Johnson said. “I don’t know. It’s a special place at the Olympics. I feel like there’s a lot of mystique around it.”
Watkins later told the Washington Post he hesitated after seeing her crash. Through an intermediary — Mikaela Shiffrin’s publicist, Megan Harrod — he checked to make sure Johnson was in the right mindset before going forward with the proposal.
“I was feeling kind of stupid, which I feel like is the moment that you kind of want the people that you love around you, when you’re just feeling dumb and childish,” Johnson said. “You’re like, ‘Tell me that I’m okay.’ Just seeing him, I was just like, ‘Yeah, it’s nice to see you. Let’s go commiserate a little bit together.’ And then everything else happened.”
The couple met on Bumble, and Watkins, who works in construction, said he initially knew little about ski racing.
“I was a little taken aback,” Watkins said. “I had very little knowledge of ski racing and everything else, and over the last couple of years I’ve grown to really love it.”
Johnson’s Olympic gold in the downhill was already a career milestone. The race was also marked by Lindsey Vonn’s fall, which resulted in a broken leg.
Now, Johnson leaves Cortina d’Ampezzo with more than a medal — and a moment few could have predicted.
