CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — Breezy Johnson is multi-talented.
In addition to skiing really, really well, the newly minted Olympic downhill champion has gotten really, really good at knitting. She makes a new headband or hat to wear at each race, and she knit hats for many of her family and friends to wear at the Milano Cortina Olympics.
That includes her now fiancé Connor Watkins, who was wearing one of Johnson’s creations Thursday, Feb. 12, when he proposed following the super-G.
Johnson originally learned to knit from her mother. But she got more into it when she got injured ahead of the Beijing Olympics and had time to kill.
‘I started knitting some headbands for myself. I started watching some YouTube videos of fun knitting stitches and things like that, and then started incorporating those,’ Johnson told USA TODAY Sports. ‘Then, it was shortly after I came back from my injuries that I started doing really well. So then it just became a superstition.’
It’s also a stress reliever.
Johnson said knitting helps calm her down before races — something she has in common with British diver Tom Daley, who went viral during the Tokyo Olympics for knitting between dives. Daley even knit himself a pouch to hold his gold medal.
After Johnson won gold, she got a shoutout from her fellow Olympic champion and knitting enthusiast.
‘He’s obviously a huge inspiration of mine, another queer athlete, huge knitter,’ said Johnson, who came out as bisexual in 2022. ‘So hearing from him was really cool.’
Many of Johnson’s current designs have swirls or diagonal stripes on them. The headband she wore for the downhill, for example, was light blue with red-and-white diagonal stripes. Her hat for the super-G was dark blue with red-and-white stripes.
‘I really like swirls and diagonal stuff,’ Johnson said. ‘Things I haven’t seen before.’
Though Johnson gives her creations to her friends and families as gifts, she hopes to auction off that downhill headband to raise money for charity. She has a few options in mind, including Coombs Outdoors in her hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the Share Winter Foundation, both of which make snow sparts accessible to underserved kids.
‘There’s so many different places that I’ve thought about trying to do something for,’ Johnson said, ‘so we’ll kind of see what strikes me and we’ll go from there.’