At PyeongChang, aerialist Ashley Caldwell will attempt a trick usually reserved for men
‘Why win with less when you can win with more?’
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Rich Maese.
Ever since she was young, aerialist Ashley Caldwell “wanted to be just as good as the boys,” she says.
Caldwell grew up a gymnast, and when she first took her acrobatics to snow, she didn’t fully understand the gender divide among aerialists. Not only were the boys attempting more difficult, thrilling tricks, but it seemed the female freestyle skiers were discouraged from going too big or flying too high.
This didn’t deter Caldwell. She pushed herself and the people around her, including her coaches. So far, it’s worked.
Next month, Caldwell, 24, will enter her third Olympics armed with a daring trick that’s usually reserved for the men: a triple somersault that no other woman has landed in competition. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s called the Daddy.
Caldwell wants to do more than prove she’s the top female aerialist in the world. She wants to show she can jump with the best, and that potential can’t be viewed strictly through the prism of gender.
Caldwell knows risky jumps tend to invite calamitous landings. One small slip-up could be costly, and an easier trick would almost certainly provide a more dependable path to the podium. But that’s not really the point.
“This has always been my mentality: Why win with less when you can win with more?” she says. “I don’t want to go out there and show the world my easiest trick. I want to show the world my best trick, me putting everything on the line to be the best.”
An aerialist's accelerated road to the Olympics
Caldwell will enter the PyeongChang Games as the sport’s reigning world champion, and her journey to the top has been an accelerated one.
She discovered aerials as a 12-year-old watching the 2006 Turin Games. By 14, she’d moved out of her parents’ Ashburn, Va., home to train full-time in Lake Placid, N.Y. And at 16, she was the youngest member of the 2010 U.S. Olympic team. She was just happy to be in Vancouver, but four years later, she had the talent to be competitive at the Sochi Games.
In those early days, a young Caldwell would land a jump and refuse to even catch her breath before sprinting back to try something bigger and tougher.
“She was never really satisfied with the status quo in training,” said Emily Cook, a three-time Olympic aerialist who trained alongside Caldwell and is now an assistant coach with the U.S. team. “She was always pushing, for sure, always looking to do bigger tricks — incredibly talented but also incredibly eager.”
Mac Bohonnon, a PyeongChang-bound aerialist for the American men’s team, first saw Caldwell at a training camp more than a decade ago. Caldwell’s talent stood out, but so did her determination.
“I don’t care if that was good for the girls,” he recalled her saying. “I don’t. I just want to do good jumps compared to everyone in the sport.”
Caldwell was always trying tougher tricks more common on the men’s program, but bigger risks carried bigger consequences. She tore the anterior cruciate ligaments in each knee in back-to-back years, essentially knocking her out of competition for two full seasons heading into the Sochi Games. She felt healthy enough for the 2014 Games but missed the prep time and feels she might have been more cautious than usual.
In Sochi, Caldwell fell short due to injury, but she still landed a jump called the full-full-full, which requires three somersaults, each incorporating a full twist. No other female Olympian was close to attempting one in Sochi, and Caldwell nailed it.
Now in PyeongChang, with a world title and a deadly trick in her back pocket, Caldwell is intent on bypassing the easy route to the Olympic podium.
“I’ve had everyone say: ‘You don’t have to go so big. You don’t have to do these tricks in order to win or be successful.’ But I didn’t really listen to them,” she says. “I wanted to push myself. I wanted to see how good I could be.”
Breaking barriers
At the world championships last year in Spain, Caldwell became the first woman to land the Daddy — which she’ll attempt at PyeongChang — and the first American woman to win a world title in more than two decades.
She calls the trick “the epitome” of her career. Every jump, every competition, every time she has strapped on skis — it has all led to this.
“I think about it all the time,” she says. “I definitely dream about it. . . . I lay in bed and think about what it would be like. How fast am I spinning? What am I looking for? What’s my coach telling me? How great does it feel when I land? Sometimes it doesn’t help me fall asleep.”
Caldwell’s coaches no longer limit her, and she sets the goals. They work together to make them happen. Her goal at the Winter Games is lofty, but Caldwell has proven it’s possible. The last time a U.S. female aerialist won an Olympic title, it was 1998. Nicki Stone took gold in Nagano with a trick that was one flip and two twists shy of what Caldwell intends to unleash in PyeongChang.
As this world champion readies to compete in South Korea, it’s clear she is no longer a tireless teenager chasing boys.
“I shouldn’t have said I want to be like the boys,” she says. “I should’ve said I want to be the best.”
