Nashville woman turns turmoil into triumph in pursuit of Olympic heptathlon spot

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - A Nashville resident’s comeback story has reached the Olympic Trials.

The heptathlon is a grueling, seven-event, two-day gauntlet of athletic prowess and it’s the perfect challenge for Ashtin Zamzow-Mahler.

“You have to be athletic,” Zamzow-Mahler said. “It’s mainly a speed, jump-based athlete. If you’re pretty fast and you can jump, you’re going to be really good.”

Lucky for Ashtin, those traits run in her family. Both of her parents enjoyed successful track careers at Texas A&M. She started her collegiate journey as an Aggie, but eventually transferred to Texas, where she broke school records and became a heptathlon national champion.

“It’s the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and the 200-meters. The next day, we start off with the long jump, then the javelin, and finish with the 800 meters.”

Ashtin’s star continued to rise when she placed 11th at the World Championships in 2022, and then it came crashing down.

“Two months later, I tore my calf,” Zamzow-Mahler recalled. “I was practicing with a really heavy sled on my back and sprinting in spikes and it tore while doing that, which was pretty painful, and then it just continued to tear.”

That calf tear kicked off an unfortunate and frustrating injury journey. She pulled her hip flexor, hurt her back, re-injured her hip flexor and experienced a slipped disc in her neck.

“It was just a whole mix of injuries that I was like, ‘Why is this happening?’” Zamzow-Mahler remembered. “‘What’s going on? Is God telling me to stop?’ I have no idea.”

More questions arose for Ashtin and her husband and coach, Wolf Mahler, about how they could physically, emotionally and financially bounce back from all the treatments and turmoil over the course of years.

Between a GoFundMe and a lot of support from their circle, she competed in her first heptathlon in two years this spring in Dallas. She earned an Olympic Trials qualifying mark that weekend.

“When I finished, it was just two years of emotion,” Zamzow-Mahler said. “It was like going from so much depression and despair in the first year of tearing the calf, like full hopelessness, almost having no hope for ever completing a heptathlon again, to being able to not only finish one, but qualify for the Olympic Trials.”

Ashtin earned the chance to compete for a spot on Team USA for the Paris Olympics, a win in itself. The perceived losses along the way molded into a valuable lesson.

“You don’t have control of your life, it’s just what you do with the circumstances you’re given – how you react to it, what you can learn from it and how can you be a better person from it.”

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