Think being an Olympian is hard? Try doing it as a new mother

PARK CITY, Utah — Ashley Caldwell spent her last weekend before she gave birth shoveling 11 truckloads of dirt out of her driveway.

PARK CITY, Utah — Ashley Caldwell spent her last weekend before she gave birth shoveling 11 truckloads of dirt out of her driveway. It was Caldwell’s version of nesting at 37 weeks pregnant in mid-July.

“‘Ashley, we don’t have to do all of it,’” said her husband, Justin Schoenefeld. “She was like, ‘No, we’re doing it all.’”

Schoenefeld’s protest was light. He already knew little could dissuade Caldwell, 32, from trying difficult things.

At only 13, Caldwell left her parents and two siblings in Virginia for an elite winter sports academy in Lake Placid, New York. She’d flipped and somersaulted around her family’s home growing up, and, as a teen away from home, she trained as an aerialist, practicing gliding down a snowy slope on skis before launching upward and performing tricks. She was a natural. Caldwell became the only woman in history to land a quadruple-twisting triple backflip.