Whitney Ashley

Whitney

by Julie Dunlap photography by Trenton

Bush

The road to Tokyo 2020 might be a more roundabout route than originally planned, but Lawrence-based Olympic discus thrower Whitney Ashley is perfectly at ease with the detour.

After all, her path to the Olympics has been paved with them.

“I actually grew up a basketball player,” Ashley says.

By her senior year of high school, Ashley was all in for track and field, specializing in shot put and eventually earning a scholarship and a place on the San Diego State University track and field team.

“When I got there they said, ‘We’re glad you’re here, but we brought you here to throw the discus.’”

While she was hesitant at first, Ashley came to trust her coaches’ vision, taking a redshirt year to learn to throw the discus.

The detour paid off.

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Ashley

Olympic Discus Thrower Adds Another Year on the Road to Tokyo

“In one year, I went from nothing to being an All-American,” Ashley reveals. “And my second year, I won a national title.”

Ashley became the first Women’s National Champion in the program from SDSU since 1984. She holds three school records.

With a national title to her name and a degree in her hand, Ashley was ready to enter the world of public relations, but her coach, again, had another idea: London 2012. The mark she hit during the national championship meet had qualified her for the Olympic trials. All she had to do was finish in the top three out of the 18 women selected to participate in the trials, and she would be on her way to London. It turned out this plan was not as easy as it sounded. “My first Olympic trial, and I took dead last,” Ashley says. “I cried.” Not everyone saw her performance as a failure, though. Olympic discus coach Art Venegas reframed the experience as feedback for Ashley. “He said, ‘You have an idea of the kind of preparation it takes to make a team like this,’” Ashley recalls of the conversation that led to her next detour. “‘Give me four years and you will come back, and you will be better than ever.’” Uninterested in ending her otherwise highly successful discus career with a last place showing at the Olympic trials, Ashley got to work. Over the next four years she trained in Southern California with Venegas, representing the U.S. in the World Championships in Moscow and Beijing. She competed in Europe, and finally returned to the Olympic trials for Rio 2016.

Andy Kokhanovsky (left) and Whitney Ashley (right)

This time with better results.

“I won the Olympic trials. My first throw, I had it in the bag,” Ashley beams. “I cried again, but this time out of triumph.”

The thrill of victory at the Olympic trials soon gave way to the agony of defeat in Rio, as Ashley fouled out, coming in last.

“So here I am with adversity again,” Ashley says, though Venegas was quick to point out the feedback to be had. “He said, ‘Now that you’ve made the Olympic team you’re not done.’”

Venegas worked another year with Ashley before leaving the Olympic training staff due to reorganization. While she tried self-training for a year, Ashley knew she needed a coach.

“I sat down and reflected on where I felt I could continue to grow and be of value,” she explains.

After reaching out to her network of fellow throwers, Ashley took a chance on yet another detour, moving to Lawrence to join other Olympic hopefuls as a volunteer coach for the University of Kansas under the expertise of Andy Kokhanovsky, a KU track and field assistant coach and 1996 Olympian from the Ukraine.

“If you don’t have the right attitude, it’s hard to be competitive, and she has it,” Kokhanovsky says of Ashley.

The right attitude is exactly what allows Ashley to navigate this latest Olympic-sized corona detour when the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2020 Tokyo games would be postponed due to the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak.

“I was actually thankful because this was not suitable training, throwing out of a parking lot and lifting weights in the garage,” Ashley reveals of the make-shift gym and training center she and other teammates created on a quick pivot. “I’d have to buy a lot of land to have a discus ring in my backyard. I throw over 200 feet!”

Back in the gym and in the ring again now, her sights are firmly set.

“I’m going to fight for that spot on the team. That’s all I can do,” she says.

“I have a huge Tokyo sign on my wall. Every morning when I wake up, I realize why I’m getting out of bed. It’s bigger than me. … You can’t just let life happen; you have to go after anything you want.”