MILAN — Ruining the friendship was worth it for Mikaela Shiffrin.
Taylor Swift responded to one of Shiffrin’s Instagram posts, congratulating her on winning her third Olympic gold medal. The post was a photo of Shiffrin during the slalom race Wednesday, Feb. 18, and she captioned it, ‘My advice is always ruin the friendship.’
‘HISTORIC’ Swift replied, adding three gold medal emojis.
Shiffrin put a screenshot of the comment on her IG story, saying ‘Ummmm’ with several starstruck and stunned emojis. Shiffrin is a big Swift fan, and she took her U.S. Ski teammates to the Denver stop of the Eras tour in July 2023.
‘Ruin the Friendship,’ off Swift’s latest ‘Life of a Showgirl’ album, is the story of someone who realizes too late that she should have had the courage to act on her feelings. After winning gold, Shiffrin talked of needing to remind herself to ignore previous criticism and commit to what she wanted.
Shiffrin’s gold was her third, tying her with snowboarder Shaun White and bobsledder Kaillie Humphries for second-most by a U.S. Winter Olympian. Only speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Eric Heiden, who have five each, have more.
‘I kept reminding myself … what was important to me is the moments between the start and the finish,’ Shiffrin said. ‘There will always be criticism. But I am here to earn the moment, and that is going to require some risk. The risk of not finishing. It’s also the risk of being criticized, and to accept that (is) not the easiest thing to do, but in the end today we could do that.’
Swift appears to be keeping tabs on the U.S. team at the Winter Olympics. After Breezy Johnson got engaged, Swift responded to the new Olympic downhill champion’s post. Johnson’s fiancé had quoted another one of Swift’s songs, ‘The Alchemy’ in his proposal.