There will be moments during February’s televised Winter Olympic Games when viewers across the world drop everything to watch the screen in quiet unity. Television makes clear what stands in front of the athlete: the competition, judges, scores, and medals. Less visible is what stands behind the athlete: an enormous, lifelong community of family, friends, coaches, trainers, physicians, and teachers who helped him or her arrive at this moment.
They’re a critical part of the competition, so we gathered the stories of homegrown Winter Olympians to see how their lives in Northern Virginia—varying in detail and background, but tied together by region and athletic drive—brought them to the top of their sport.
Here, we spoke to Ashburn native and three-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell. The freestyle aerial skier, who holds the world record for hardest acrobatic trick ever landed by a female, shared her path to skiing, life in Virginia, and Olympic journey as she prepares to compete in Beijing.
Ashley Caldwell
Age: 28
Hometown: Ashburn
Sport: Freestyle skiing, aerials
Games: Pyeongchang 2018, Sochi 2014, Vancouver 2010
A natural at twisting and flipping while 60 feet above snowy slopes, three-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell grew up in Ashburn and Waterford while attending Loudoun County’s Hillside Elementary and Blue Ridge and Harmony middle schools. The mild climate of the Virginia Piedmont doesn’t typically churn out competitive aerial skiers, so how did this champion find her path to the Winter Olympic Games?
It began on a balance beam at APEX Gymnastics in Leesburg. “I trained in gymnastics for a long time, but at 5’7” at just 13, my mom saw I was getting too tall to become an Olympic gymnast,” says Caldwell. The jump to the slopes came after watching aerial competitions during the televised 2006 Winter Olympics. “Mom said, ‘Hey, I think you’d be great at that,’ and then she literally typed the words ‘freestyle skiing in America’ in a Google search, and we found a camp.”
Caldwell credits her father for her athletic genes. An avid skier, he introduced her to skis when she was just 3 years old. “My first time skiing was probably at Roundtop, but our family often went to Seven Springs, Massanutten, and other local resorts,” Caldwell says.
Her dad took her to Freestyle America, a New Hampshire–based camp that trains freestyle athletes in Whistler, Canada, during the summers. “I was referred to their aerials team at their water camp, and a few weeks later, I was doing backflips into a pool with skis.” Caldwell landed her first flip at age 13 and was hooked.
“Oddly enough, I was there with the entire U.S. national team,” says Caldwell with a laugh. “I did my first backflip ever with the entire national team, and let me tell you, that was extremely intimidating! They were all like, ‘Who is this little kid, and why is she here?’” They soon understood why she was there—when she made it to the Olympics at age 16.
Caldwell describes her path to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver as “a wild ride.”
She left Virginia to train full time when she was only 14. “Some people may have thought my parents were recklessly abandoning me to sports, throwing their child’s future away, but when I made it to the Olympics, maybe it didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all,” Caldwell says. “My parents said, ‘You’re not going to the Olympics with gymnastics, but you have an opportunity to do something cool with freestyle skiing. If you don’t like it, you can always come home, and we’ll just reassess every year.”
With two college degrees under her belt, Caldwell never let training or competitions disrupt her education. After seeing other young athletes at the Olympic Training Center taking online college courses, Caldwell decided the best path for her was an early GED diploma at 16, immediately followed by college. With a bachelor’s degree in finance, she’s currently working toward pairing her first master’s in real estate development with a second master’s in legal studies at the University of Utah. “Combining school and sports training is good for my health and brain,” says Caldwell. “It gives me a place to relax and focus on something other than sports.”
“Early access to opportunities is important, and Northern Virginia offers great schools, good sports programs, amazing facilities, and so many activities that helped me find out what I really liked doing,” says Caldwell. The path from Virginia led Caldwell all over the world as a three-time Olympian, collecting impressive hardware and records at world championship and world cup events.
“My hardest trick is my favorite trick, when I do it well,” says Caldwell. It’s the hardest trick ever landed by a female athlete, as measured by the number and sequence of twists and flips. She describes it in aerial jargon as a “full, double-full, full,” or a triple-twisting quadruple backflip. “I do a flip and a twist, then a flip and two twists, and then a flip and a twist, all in one trick.” Because of the speed of these tricks, it may be hard for a novice spectator to keep track of all the gravity-defying rotations, but every movement is precisely calculated and practiced repeatedly before an event.
What goes through Caldwell’s mind when staring down that ramp? “It depends on how scared I am,” she admits. “We are trained to focus on just one or two specific things that we need to perfect. Each athlete has a different headspace that is productive for their training or competition. Some are serious or quiet, but I’m the laughing, dancing, joking kind of athlete. If at the top I get too nervous, my coaches know to help me change that attitude because even if I’m faking the dancing or laughing, I’ll perform better.”
Caldwell treasures memories of being in the Olympic Village with family and other athletes, but she says COVID restrictions will make the Beijing 2022 games all about medaling. “Even without family present, nothing compares to the entire ambience and pressure of just being at the Olympics, and it’s overwhelming no matter how you look at it,” Caldwell says. “I feel sad for athletes who are experiencing their first or only Olympics without their families, but we are fortunate to even be at the Olympics.” Caldwell is excited for a new event at Beijing 2022—mixed-team aerials—and the possibility of competing alongside aerials teammate and boyfriend Justin Schoenefeld. “It’s hard for Olympic athletes to date outside of the sport, so we are happy to have the same schedule and lifestyle, and it would be cool to share that event with him.”
This story originally ran in our February issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.