Ashton Taylor Locklear (born January 13, 1998) is a retired American artistic gymnast from North Carolina. She was a member of the gold medal-winning United States team at the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and is a two-time national champion on the uneven bars (2014, 2016). Locklear was an uneven bars specialist and was an alternate for the 2016 Summer Olympics U.S. gymnastics team, the Final Five. Personal life Locklear was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, to Carrie and Terry Locklear. She has an older sister, Angelia, who is also a gymnast. Locklear was homeschooled until 8th grade. She is Native American and a member of the Lumbee Tribe. She became Nike N7 ambassador in 2017. Gymnastics career Pre-elite At a young age, Locklear watched her older sister's gymnastics lessons and began imitating her. She also cited watching the 2000 Olympics on television as an inspiration to begin competing. She began her gymnastics career in trampolining, but later switched to artistic gymnastics. She began her study of gymnastics with Terry Barrett at Physical Awareness and Gymnastics, in Hamlet, NC. Locklear's first championship was a state-level trampoline and tumbling title she earned at age five. After that she began training at KPAC (Kristie Phillips Athletic Center) in Lake Norman and was coached by Kristie Phillips for a while. When she was eleven years old, she began training at Everest Gymnastics in Huntersville, North Carolina, with coaches Qi Han (a former member of the Chinese men's national team and a graduate of Beijing Sports University) and his wife, Yiwen Chen. Because of the distance between Huntersville and Locklear's hometown of Hamlet, North Carolina her family maintains a second household near the gym. 2013 Locklear competed at the Nastia Liukin Cup in 2013 where she placed seventh in the all-around and on balance beam, first on uneven bars, and ninth on floor exercise. Later that year Locklear suffered a stress fracture in her back, which limited her to conditioning for approximately four months and forced her to stop competing on the floor exercise and vault. Senior 2014 Locklear's breakout performances came during the 2014 season. At the Secret U.S. Classic, she finished first on the uneven bars with a score of 15.700, beating Kyla Ross, the reigning world silver medalist on bars, by more than half a point. In August, Locklear competed at the P&G Championships, where she became national champion on the