Ashley Wagner

Ashley Elisabeth Wagner (born May 16, 1991) is an American former competitive figure skater. 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 competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and placed 7th. 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.

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. 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.

Wagner was homeschooled by her mother for seven months. 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.

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. 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.