Sipu Jha
Taylor Swift did not need a paragraph to make Mikaela Shiffrin’s week even bigger. One word on Instagram was enough. After Shiffrin won gold in women’s slalom at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina on Feb. 18, she posted a razor-sharp caption built around Swift’s song “Ruin the Friendship.”The line Shiffrin chose was simple: “My advice is always ruin the friendship.” Swift, who is engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, dropped into the comments with a 1-word verdict on the run and the moment: “HISTORIC 🥇🥇🥇.”
Mikaela Shiffrin leans on ‘Ruin the Friendship’ to attack the start gate
Shiffrin did more than sneak a lyric into a caption. She built part of her season around that track. Speaking to People, she said Swift’s “Ruin the Friendship” from “The Life of a Showgirl” was the song she kept going back to before races.“The lyrics go into some loss and regret and things like that, but at the end of the day, when I started out this season listening to the album, I kept putting on ‘Ruin the Friendship,’ ‘cause I’m like, ‘This is what I want to feel when I’m in the start gate. I want to go. I just want to leave it all behind and ruin the friendship,’” Shiffrin said.For her, the song is about risk. She told the outlet it is “about taking risks, kind of, in my life” and that the mindset fit the way she wanted to ski this season.That approach paid off. Shiffrin’s slalom win gave her a third Olympic gold and made her the first U.S. skier to reach that mark, adding to a résumé that already includes more World Cup victories than any skier in history.She matched the aggressive mentality with the image she chose. Shiffrin told People the action shot on Instagram was “probably the best photo I’ve ever had of a slalom turn,” and that the lyric captured exactly how she wanted that turn to feel.Swift’s reply landed with the same precision. The all-caps “HISTORIC” plus three gold-medal emojis nodded to Shiffrin’s three Olympic titles and to where this win sits in U.S. Winter Olympic history, tying her with names like Kaillie Humphries and Shaun White for second among American winter athletes in gold medals.
Taylor Swift keeps turning the Winter Olympics into a Swiftie storyline
Shiffrin’s caption was not the only Alpine moment that turned into Swift content this month. American skier Breezy Johnson also pulled from Swift’s catalog when her boyfriend, Connor Watkins, proposed at the finish area during the Super-G in Italy.Johnson announced the engagement on Instagram and then got her own Swift comment. This time the singer went to “The Alchemy,” the track widely linked to Kelce. Swift wrote, “‘Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me’ CONGRATULATIONS!!!” on their post.Johnson later said she “never expected” Swift to celebrate the moment and admitted she had to process the fact that one of the biggest artists on the planet had just dropped a line from a song tied to the Kelce romance straight into her comments.Between Shiffrin’s start-gate anthem, a gold-medal Instagram post, and Johnson’s proposal, Swift has found a way to sit inside the Winter Olympics feed without ever clipping into a ski. For Chiefs fans and Swifties watching from home, that 1-word “HISTORIC” comment felt less like a casual reaction and more like Swift officially stamping Shiffrin’s run into her own growing Olympic lore.
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