Ashley Farquharson Saw The Scoreboard During Her Final Olympic Run. Her Medal Came Down To Thousandths.
Ashley Farquharson never breaks focus while she slides. But, before her last turn on her fourth and final run at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, she glanced at the clock.
"I was really trying to push my position, and for whatever reason, I just looked up. And I could see the screen. I see the map of green, red, green, red. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh."
Green. Red. Green. Red.
"The scoreboard was like a literal Christmas tree…green, red, green, red, green, red, green."
Farquharson and Italian Luger Verena Hofer had been vying back and forth for the bronze the entire track. Farquharson had one corner left.
"It’s funny because I was feeling so confident the whole run. I was thinking, like, I got this in the bag. And then I saw that I had been back and forth, back and forth with Rena the whole track. So then the last corner, I was like… here goes nothing. I really don't actually know if I got this."
She crossed the finish line and her time flashed across the screen. Farquharson had just become the second American woman and the first in 12 years to win an Olympic medal in luge.
"At the finish, you have about four seconds where you're going uphill because you're slowing down. You're just by yourself, just you and your sled slowing down. Those four seconds of silence when I knew I had gotten a medal were seriously crazy. And then my whole team met me at the dock."
The Only Judge
Luge is timed to the thousandth of a second. The time it takes to blink is 400 times longer. In track and field, a reaction faster than one-tenth of a second is deemed physically impossible and ruled a false start.
The human body cannot register a thousandth of a second. Yet, in luge, it’s the margin that decides everything.
At certain tracks, a few thousandths separate a dozen athletes. Farquharson has been tied to the thousandth at least twice every season. Her teammate Jonny Gustafson says it "feels like nothing until you're tied."
"Our only criteria is the time clock. We're not judged on anything else. It's us versus the clock. And all I can do is put down the best run that I can at that moment. I can't control literally anything else. It’s all just totally beyond me."
No Finish Line
Coming out of high school, Farquharson had a decision to make. Collegiate softball scholarship or luge. Gain a traditional college experience or move to Lake Placid to go all in. She chose luge and dedicated her life to chasing speed, one-thousandth of a second faster at a time.
"As much as I loved softball, I knew that I would never find the constant chase for perfection and for speed that exists in luge. It's never ending. There's never a limit to how fast you can go, there's just never a finish line. Which I think is really cool."
Luge has no finish line. For most people, that'd be a nightmare. For Farquharson, the unattainability of perfection is what fuels her continued pursuit of excellence.
"You can be totally satisfied in what you just did, but you also know that it can always be better. That juxtaposition for me is just very fulfilling, because I can always be proud and happy of what I'm doing while knowing that it's never the end. I can always keep going."
It's likely this perspective that's made Farquharson the second American woman to win an Olympic medal in luge after Erin Hamlin broke the barrier in Sochi twelve years earlier.
Across my 175 interviews with the 2026 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team, a love for the process is what separates the good from the great. The ones who've stood on a podium are the first to tell you there aren't enough gold medal days to sustain a career. You have to love chasing the thousandths. Farquharson does.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
I'm Amy Wotovich and I am on a mission to interview 100% of Team USA's 2026 Olympic and Paralympic athletes to create the most comprehensive mindset record of a single Games cycle. What do elite competitors actually believe about pressure, identity, failure, and joy? Ashley Farquharson is one of hundreds of athletes sharing their unfiltered answers. Follow the journey!
