How to Hack Your Way into the Olympics

What if the secret to Olympic glory wasn't talent?

In a world of elite athletes, one average skier rewrote the rules of Olympic qualification. She never landed a single trick, yet she competed in the Winter Olympics.

This is Elizabeth Swaney's story.

Elizabeth grew up in California. She was a normal Californian girl with an extraordinary dream: to be in the Olympic Games. Unlike most Olympic athletes, she wasn't a prodigy or a product of elite sports academies. She was just an average skier who figured out how to outsmart the system.

While at college, she started looking for ways to become an Olympian. After thinking about bobsleigh and skeleton, she chose freestyle skiing, the halfpipe.

Her approach was unconventional but clever. Elizabeth studied the Olympic rules and made a plan:

1. Go to at least 30 events worldwide

2. Finish each run without falling

3. Slowly get enough points to make it

She couldn't make the U.S. team, so she started skiing for Hungary in 2015, because her grandparents were born there.

Over the years, Elizabeth became a fixture …