[Being So Close] The aftermath of missing the 2026 Winter Olympics — the isolation, the replay loop, and the quiet courage it takes to keep training.
Close Enough to Touch
Some losses didn’t look like losses from the outside. For Ashton Salwan, there wasn’t a single crash or defining injury during the 2026 Olympic qualifying season that explained everything. There was only the quiet reality of being close enough to feel the Olympic dream within reach — and then a two-minute call saying it was over.
It felt like a long voyage cut short — two years of deliberate focus inside the 2026 Olympic qualifying window, suddenly over. Missing by a mile would have been an easier pill to swallow.
Ashton’s strongest case was his consistent, full body of work during the qualification period — but the Olympic Team decision ultimately turned on a single top-six result he didn’t have.
The Margin Nobody Sees
Everyone imagines the Olympics as a finish line — the destination at the end of a long, heroic road. You train, you qualify, you arrive.
But at this level, the sport lived in margins. A takeoff that was 95% still wasn’t enough. A landing that didn’t settle still counted. “Nearly” could be the difference between staying in the conversation — or stepping out of it.
From the outside, a season could be reduced to outcomes. From the inside, it was a thousand variables meeting in seconds. And when the outcome landed one place short, the body still carried all the work… while the mind tried to figure out where to put it.
The Mental Whiplash
Ashton was given 2026 Winter Olympic uniforms and getting them tailored, planning logistics, believing he was inside the circle. Two days later, the call came — and the Olympic Team spot was not his.
The swing was brutal. Not only emotionally — physically. His system had been running on focus, adrenaline, and control. Days had been engineered around purpose: eat, train, recover, repeat. Everything had been built toward one outcome.
“I gave everything — everything — I had, in the pursuit of this dream. Dreaming big dreams, going all in and having repeatable results shouldn’t make you feel like a failure.” ~Ashton Salwan
That line mattered because being that close could trick anyone into believing the effort was wasted. It wasn’t. The work was real. The commitment was real. The dream was real. And still his results landed just outside the line.
Sorrow and Solitude
What made the days that followed different wasn’t only the disappointment — it was how quickly everything around him shifted.
A Section 9 grievance was filed. Arbitration followed, but it was not decided in Ashton’s favor, in part due to the broad, precedent-setting impact the ruling would have had across U.S. Olympic Freestyle Team athlete decision. That selection spans aerials, moguls, halfpipe, slopestyle, and ski cross.
Then, a group vote changed Ashton’s ability to remain and practice in Lake Placid — right when the only thing he knew how to do with heartbreak was work.
“In the weeks following the news that I wouldn’t be going to Italy, I was filled with sadness and tears, but more than anything else, I felt utterly lost and adrift.” ~Ashton Salwan
People talk about how hard it can be for Olympians to return home — for those who don’t medal, for those who don’t make finals. But Ashton learned a different kind of heaviness: returning home prematurely, to strained teammate dynamics, made the loneliness sharper — not as a feeling, but as a lived reality.
What to Choose Next
Ashton found gratitude without using it to erase disappointment. Gratitude for the people who stayed close. Gratitude for the coaches who kept teaching. Gratitude for the chance to keep doing something rare: to fly, to risk, to learn, to grow.
The Olympics had been the dream — a powerful one. But he didn’t disappear when that dream didn’t land on schedule. If anything, this was where the foundation strengthened. This was where belief became real.
And even with the loneliness — even with the replay — the work still remained. And so did he.
