She was frustrated to receive so much attention when she felt her competitors deserved the limelight.

“I look up to them,” she said, naming Sharpe, the eventual gold medal winner in the event, and the United States competitors Brita Sigourney and Annalisa Drew.

Each nation can send a maximum of four skiers to compete in the women’s halfpipe. So while other athletes qualified ahead of Swaney, she was able to ski for Hungary thanks to that quota system and a dearth of other athletes from countries that had not already sent four competitors to the event.

Philippe Belanger, the head judge of freeskiing competitions at the Pyeongchang Olympics, told The Denver Post that the International Ski Federation was considering proposals that would decrease the number of competitive slots available for Olympic competitors in the halfpipe, which would make it more difficult for athletes like Swaney to qualify.

But Swaney, who is based in the Bay Area, has been working toward her Olympic dream for most of her life. Inspired by Kristi Yamaguchi’s gold medal performance in the 1992 Olympic Games, Swaney skated from her childhood until her second year of college. (Her father signed her up for a 30-minute weekly lesson. She did not realize until years later that figure skaters trained six or seven days a week.)

For two years at the University of California, Berkeley, she was the coxswain — the person who directs the crew from the stern of the boat — for the nationally competitive men’s rowing team.