To have full and multiple criteria is the best way to decide who is best prepared to be on that Olympic team.
— Ashley Wagner
I'm so proud to be an Army brat, but it was not an easy life. Moving around so much, skating was that one constant thing I had to hold on to.
Skating is one of those sports you unfortunately see people get stuck in.
When my parents were paying for my sport, it wasn't just me out on the ice. Pretty much every dollar my mom made teaching went into my skating.
I'm a show pony, and I don't get to skate with girls doing triple Axels every single day. I skate with little babies who are working on their single Axels while trying not to hit them on the ice.
I'm not a pretty princess, and I'm aware of that, so I like music that is really intense, really bold, and characters that in a way almost have a dark side and are kind of evil because, for me, that's when I feel my strongest and fiercest, when I'm not necessarily the good girl.
You should not be defined by one bad performance.
I'm not a crier.
You always imagine everything will go so smoothly in the Olympic season.
I can adapt to change easily, but I'm not a fan of it.
I'm the type of skater that needs to stay upbeat and relaxed, open, because if I stay quiet, I get in my head, and then I start to think too much and start to doubt.
When I step out onto the ice to compete 'Romeo and Juliet,' I don't feel like a fighter. I feel very nervous, and it's very difficult for me to get into the mindset for it.
In 2010, I was 17 or 18 and thought, 'Yeah, the Olympics, that might happen.'
A lot of people who watch figure skaters want us to look like pretty princesses. I want people to see the athlete, and I want to look like a woman among girls.
I want people to see a real person on the ice. I want to seem tangible, hard-working, passionate about my skating, not just going out and doing something I've rehearsed a million times.
I haven't mastered the art of sitting and smiling.
When I'm competing, I need to be strong.
Yu Na Kim, Mao Asada, Carolina Kostner - all these girls can do triple-triples in their sleep, and they have the skating skills and the spins and the rest of the technical jumps. So I have to have that as well if I want to be able to call myself 'competitive' against them. And when I say 'competitive,' I mean I want to win.
