Ashley Wagner’s Olympic Breakup Won’t Keep Her From Her Greatest Love

What do you do when the thing you love the most stops loving you back? “When I finished, I was beaming,” elite figure skater Ashley Wagner says of leaving the ice after her 2018 U.S. Nationals performance, the one that would qualify her for the Olympics in Pyeongchang. The blonde, blue-eyed, both highly qualified and camera-ready Wagner, a 2016 World Silver Medalist, with her sparkly personality and La La Land–inspired routine, was widely considered to be a shoe-in for one of the three spots on the Olympic team. The crowd was on their feet.

But it wasn’t enough—Wagner, America’s most decorated female skater of the past six years, a three-time national champion at 26, who already scored a team bronze medal in Sochi, came in fourth, or as the first alternate. “Every molecule in my body is broken,” she said, recalling the feeling of watching her scores appear on the stadium screens: “Congratulations, this is the most devastating piece of news you’re ever going to read.”

The good news is that Wagner hasn’t broken up with skating, even if, in that moment, it felt like skating broke up with her. “I’ve put my heart and soul into this sport for 22 years,” she says, which explains why she didn’t go down without a fight. A notorious postshow interview in which she said she was “furious” was not exactly what’s expected of figure skaters, especially women, in a sport that prizes grace and, above all, the way you’re perceived.

Now that she isn’t going to the Olympics, it’s up to the former “show pony” to figure out what her future holds, a fact that’s not lost on her when she asks: “What do real people do?” One thing’s for sure: Wagner’s still training; still skating with the same obsession she had before her heartbreak. Every morning she makes breakfast, hits the gym, hits the rink, repeats. “There’s no one to pick up the pieces other than me,” she says. “I have to be okay, because that’s my only option.”

Director Liza Mandelup
Editor Amanda Griffin
DP Benjamin Whatley
Hair Ian James, Randi Petersen
Makeup Kristin Hilton, Amber Kerns
Sound Jeremy Emery, Gabe Stewart
Prouducer Rose Krane
Filmed at The Rinks Lakewood ICE