Ashley Wagner

Ashley Elisabeth Wagner (born May 16, 1991) is an American former competitive figure skater.

Wagner was born in 1991 on a U.S. Army base in Heidelberg, Germany, where her father was stationed at the time.

Her younger brother was a skater and competed on the national level.

Because Wagner's father was in the army, she was a military brat when her family moved nine times during her childhood; they settled in northern Virginia when she was ten years old.

Besides Germany, she has lived in Delaware, California, Alaska, Kansas, Washington state, and Virginia.

Wagner currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts but considers Seabeck, Washington her home.

Wagner was homeschooled by her mother for seven months.

In 1998, Wagner watched Tara Lipinski win the gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan on television.

From that moment, she decided that she wanted to compete in the Olympics too.

Wagner later trained in Kansas City and Tacoma, Washington until her family moved to Portland, Oregon, where she was taught by Tonya Harding's former coach, Dody Teachman.

In January 2002, Wagner began training with Shirley Hughes in Alexandria, Virginia.

Jill Shipstad-Thomas choreographed her competitive programs.

In the 2002–03 season, Wagner qualified for the U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships, which are the national championships of the United States for figure skaters at the juvenile and intermediate levels.

She won the silver medal at her regional competition, the first step to qualifying for the national championships, but placed tenth at her sectional competition and did not qualify for the 2004 National Championships.

Wagner qualified for her first U.S. Championships in the 2004–05 season after placing first at both the Northwest Pacific Regionals and the Pacific Coast Sectionals.

Competing on the novice level, she placed seventh at Nationals.

For the 2005–06 season, Wagner moved up to the junior level.

She won both the Northwest Pacific Regional and Pacific Coast Sectional competitions again to qualify for the National Championships.

At the 2006 U.S. Nationals in St. Louis, Missouri, Wagner finished fourth on the junior level, earning the pewter medal.

After the event, Wagner was named to the U.S. team for the Triglav Trophy in Slovenia, her first major international competition and where she made her international junior debut.

There she landed six triple jumps, including a triple toe-triple toe combination, in her long program to move up from third in the short program to first overall.

At the junior level, Wagner is a two-time World Junior bronze medalist (2007, 2009), the 2006-07 Junior Grand Prix Final silver medalist, a two-time Junior Grand Prix medalist (2 gold), and the 2007 U.S. junior bronze medalist.

She later attended West Potomac High School through the 2007/2008 school year.

After studying at Northern Virginia Community College via its online Extended Learning Institute, she enrolled in Saddleback College in California but did not graduate.

She speaks a little German in addition to English.

Wagner is currently enrolled at Northeastern University.

In an interview, Wagner said that she has suffered several concussions and she believes these incidents had affected her cognitive abilities.

Wagner competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and placed 7th.

She is the 2016 World silver medalist, a 2014 Olympic bronze medalist in the team event, the 2012 Four Continents champion, a three-time Grand Prix Final medalist (1 silver, 2 bronze), a thirteen-time Grand Prix medalist (5 gold, 3 silver, 5 bronze), and a three-time U.S. national champion (2012, 2013, and 2015).

Wagner placed 17th at the Intermediate level.

The following season she tested up to the novice level.

In July 2019, Wagner came forward and revealed that she was sexually assaulted as a 17-year-old by John Coughlin, a fellow figure skater who committed suicide the previous January after he was accused of multiple sex crimes.

Wagner announced in September of 2023 that she was engaged to partner Alex Clark.

In December of the same year she gave birth to the couple's first child, Rosalie Starbird Clark.

Wagner began skating at age five in Eagle River, Alaska.

She says that her mother told her she could choose between ballet or figure skating, but she "wasn't going to do anything in pink shoes."

According to her mother, Wagner began to show promise early and won a gold medal at her first competition.

Wagner joined NBC as a color commentator for the 2020 European Figure Skating Championships.

She provided figure skating analysis for NBC's world feed at the 2024 U.S. Championships alongside fellow figure skater and former training mate Adam Rippon.

Ashley Wagner is the first child and only daughter of American parents Lieutenant Colonel Eric Wagner, U.S. Army (retired) and Melissa James, a former schoolteacher.