Amber Glenn Is Carving a New Trail for Determine Skaters

When Amber Glenn used to be named the highest U.S. girls’s determine skater for a 2d consecutive 12 months in January, she collapsed in tears, freeing mountains of drive that have been weighing on her chiseled shoulders.This week, she is aiming so as to add any other gold medal to her pile on the International Determine Skating Championships in Boston. If she pulls it off, Ms. Glenn would end her season an undefeated champion and change into the primary American determine skater to say the ladies’s International Championship identify in nearly two decades.It might be Ms. Glenn’s largest win but, however best the most recent in a sequence of firsts for a lady who has landed the triple axel bounce in all of her competitions this season — person who, for Ms. Glenn, has been full of triumph and tragedy after a aircraft crash in January killed 11 determine skaters, a few of whom she had shared the ice with simply days earlier than they died.If Ms. Glenn wins and even medals at Worlds, she would be the first brazenly L.G.B.T.Q. lady to take action in a recreation whose feminine athletes in large part have a tendency to mould their likenesses to that of a cookie-cutter ice queen.Ms. Glenn, in contrast, has grown her profile via celebrating what makes her other.She is a pansexual determine skater who jumps with the ability of a pole-vaulter, fashions her hairstyles off the ones of brassy pop stars, collects lightsabers — and is primed to be The united states’s subsequent giant skating famous person at 25, an age when maximum of her friends have lengthy retired.A Tale of PerseveranceOn a Saturday night in February, Ms. Glenn darted across the corners of the ice rink at Chelsea Piers in Big apple at double-digit speeds as her short-program tune — “This Time” via Janet Jackson — blared from loudspeakers. She used to be in New York to fine-tune a few of her choreography earlier than the International Championships this month.Ms. Glenn’s girlish freckles have been offset via graphic winged eyeliner and blond hair that trailed at the back of her like a parachute as she skated.Previous that day, Ms. Glenn stated in an interview that the final 8 months had “been so much.” She started coaching for the present season final spring and received her first gold medal final September on the Lombardia Trophy festival in Bergamo, Italy.She has now not stopped profitable since. Over the process a number of weeks final November and December, Ms. Glenn traversed the globe a lot of occasions, incomes first position in 3 primary competitions that integrated the Grand Prix Ultimate in Grenoble, France, the place on Dec. 7 she was the primary American lady to be topped champion in 14 years.Two weeks later, she clinched gold at Nationals in Wichita, Kan., via a slender margin.However Ms. Glenn’s profession, which started greater than twenty years in the past at an ice rink inside of a shopping center, has now not been a linear experience to the highest.At 14, she was the U.S. junior girls’s champion. A couple of 12 months later, Ms. Glenn used to be hospitalized for melancholy and nervousness, which stopped her from skating for 5 months. On the time, she used to be additionally limiting her consuming — eating one or two Lean Delicacies foods an afternoon. In newer years, she has suffered more than one critical concussions and has been haunted via errors, like neglected jumps, that she has attributed to nervousness. It has now not helped that a lot of her accidents and stumbles have performed out on reside tv.Terry Gannon, an NBC sports activities commentator who has known as nationally televised figure-skating occasions for the reason that Nineteen Nineties, attributed Ms. Glenn’s successes this season to perseverance.“I believe like I’ve lived this adventure along with her and watched her over time figuring out she had the facility however arising brief,” stated Mr. Gannon, who described Ms. Glenn’s tale as emotionally enjoyable to audience. “Now we see her spoil via on the very best stage,” he added.Her profitable season harks again to the time when American skaters like Dorothy Hamill and Michelle Kwan ruled the game. As a emerging famous person of ladies’s singles, determine skating’s marquee match, Ms. Glenn has created some contemporary buzz within the run-up to subsequent 12 months’s Milan-Cortina Wintry weather Olympics. “It’s massively vital to the good fortune of American skating to have a celebrity who has an opportunity to win” on the Olympics, Mr. Gannon stated.Sasha Cohen used to be the final American to take action, incomes a silver medal on the Turin Wintry weather Olympics in 2006. If Ms. Glenn’s profitable streak carries into subsequent 12 months, when Staff USA skaters are decided, the rustic will have its subsequent best possible probability at an Olympic medal.Mastering the Triple AxelOn the ice, Ms. Glenn has change into recognized for positive hallmarks: Touchdown jumps along with her fingers stretched vertically in a dramatic V-shape, dressed in the darkish lipstick of a prima ballerina, appearing with a mane of more than one ponytails that she says is encouraged via the pop famous person Kesha.Whilst she skates with a very simple magnificence, her option to the game has continuously been described the usage of phrases like “explosive” and “competitive.” “This is most often an indicator of guys’s skating, they’re allowed to be competitive and muscled,” stated Kaitlyn Weaver, 35, a champion ice dancer and two-time Olympian who’s now a choreographer for Ms. Glenn.Ms. Glenn stated she had leaned into athleticism slightly than “conforming to seem smaller.” This method is embodied via her include of the triple axel, a feat wherein skaters hurl themselves face-forward into the air and rotate 1,260 levels earlier than touchdown backward on a unmarried foot. Ms. Glenn has been the one girls’s skater of her stage to land a ratified triple axel this season in global festival, consistent with the World Skating Union.Ms. Glenn’s loose skate program finally 12 months’s International Championships started with a great triple axel — and resulted in more than one spills onto the ice. She in the long run completed in tenth position, a consequence that she attributed to her nervousness flaring up right through her program. “My mind didn’t know the adaptation between competing and having to struggle a endure,” as she put it.Final summer time, Ms. Glenn started integrating neurotherapy into her two-hour practices so that you could mitigate her efficiency nervousness. She wires herself to a tool that tracks her center charge and mind waves, which is helping visualize when her nervousness spikes.Caroline Silby, a recreation psychology advisor who works with skaters international, prompt neurotherapy to Ms. Glenn. “Right through her profession, she’s at all times had moments of brilliance, it wasn’t like she wasn’t doing it.” Ms. Silby stated. “She simply wasn’t doing it constantly.”She added, “When the entire global talks about how you’ll be able to’t do the second one part of your program, it’s about ‘OK, how are we able to get the mind to stick quiet?’”Embracing Her IdentityMs. Glenn’s mom, Cathlene Glenn, stated there had at all times been hints that her daughter used to be other from different ladies her age when she used to be rising up in Plano, Texas. Amongst them: Ms. Glenn, who started skating as a 5-year-old on the rink within the within sight Stonebriar Centre mall, gravitated towards dinosaur toys over dolls, her mom stated.She added that, by the point Ms. Glenn had grew to become 8, coaches have been remarking that she had outstanding ability. Via 11, she had mastered each triple bounce except for the axel.However in a recreation wherein an intermediate pair of skates can value $800, the cash required to stay Ms. Glenn skating at a top stage was a supply of friction for her folks. To save lots of on classes and rink charges, her mom labored as a nanny for a former trainer of Ms. Glenn’s and on the entrance table of the mall ice rink. Her father, Richard Glenn, a legislation enforcement officer, labored additional time and took out of doors jobs doing safety at film theaters and hospitals.Ms. Glenn, for her phase, stated she didn’t inform her folks when she used to be outgrowing her skates. “I nonetheless have the bunions and scars to end up it,” she stated.At the present time, she wears pairs that may value round $1,500 — and she or he will get them without cost from Jackson Ultima, which makes use of her symbol in promotional campaigns.At Chelsea Piers, her skates’ blades have been driven to the prohibit as she ripped into the ice with expansive lunges and razor-sharp turns. She in most cases practices on the Broadmoor International Area, a U.S. Olympic coaching website online in Colorado Springs, Colo., now not a long way from her domestic within the town. Above the rink, a flag with Ms. Glenn’s title flies along others bearing the names of fellow American champions like Peggy Fleming.Ms. Glenn’s recognition as a distinct roughly skater used to be strengthened in 2019, when she spread out about her pansexual identification in a piece of writing for Dallas Voice mag. Months after it used to be revealed, she arrived at Nationals in 2020 to peer dozens of enthusiasts within the stands retaining the Pleasure flag in her honor.Ms. Weaver, who on the time had now not but set to work as a choreographer with Ms. Glenn, recalled observing the scene on TV and “weeping.” In 2021, Ms. Weaver was the primary Olympic feminine skater to publicly pop out as queer. “We paintings in opposition to a stereotype,” she stated, likening brazenly queer feminine skaters to brazenly homosexual N.F.L. avid gamers.Having realized to be extra at ease in her pores and skin, Ms. Glenn now holds a delight flag when she skates a victory lap at competitions. In recent times, she have been fascinated with the tactics she may just lend a hand other people like herself at a time wherein Ms. Glenn stated “identities are being erased.”“Infrequently, I’m having a look on the global the place we’re taking such a lot of steps again,” she added. “I need to be a part of the individuals who stay us shifting ahead.”She used to be talking on a video name in overdue February from her condominium in Colorado Springs, which Ms. Glenn stocks along with her canine, Uki, a schipperke who, like Ms. Glenn, has realized to spin on call for.Tragedies Amid TriumphsAround Ms. Glenn’s condominium are pieces that supply glimpses of her persona. There are lightsabers held on a wall (she is partial to “Superstar Wars”) and a cupboard full of Magic: The Accumulating and Pokémon playing cards. As a substitute of actual flora, she decorates the distance with Lego flower displays as a result of her go back and forth agenda. “It’s great to have ones that stick round,” she stated.She moved to “the Springs” in the summertime of 2022, she stated, to paintings with best coaches — and to benefit from loose bodily treatment and private coaching periods introduced via the realm’s Olympic coaching website online, which can be backed via organizations together with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. It’s additionally the primary time Ms. Glenn has lived on her personal.Her major trainer, Damon Allen, stated Ms. Glenn’s newly unbiased way of life has helped shift her aggressive direction. Mr. Allen, 51, will accompany her to the International Championships. “The preparation is similar now we have been doing all 12 months,” he stated. “We’re retaining it easy.”To earn the ladies’s singles gold medal, she is going to wish to defeat Kaori Sakamoto, 24, the Eastern skater who has received it the final 3 years.Skaters of Ms. Sakamoto’s and Ms. Glenn’s age have traditionally been uncommon attractions atop the championship podiums in girls’s determine skating, a recreation wherein the final 3 Olympic gold medalists have been between the ages of 15 and 17 after they received. Within the wake of a doping scandal involving a 15-year-old Russian skater that rocked the Beijing Wintry weather Olympics in 2022, the minimal age for feminine skaters to compete within the video games used to be raised to 17.At Ms. Glenn’s coaching rink, she refers to herself because the “a laugh aunt,” Mr. Allen stated. Her pal Gracie Gold, 29, a retired two-time nationwide champion who has spoken about her personal struggles as a skater, jokingly stated that overdue bloomers within the recreation like Ms. Glenn have been “best bizarre to other people in skating that wish to pass out of doors and contact grass.”“I don’t suppose hockey or soccer could be as in style if most people used to be observing 14-year-old boys do it,” Ms. Gold added.She is one of the skaters whom Ms. Glenn has fostered friendships with. Via gestures like bringing flora to fellow athletes at practices, Ms. Glenn has attempted to strengthen camaraderie in a recreation recognized for a cutthroat tradition, which has been embodied via cases just like the Olympian Nancy Kerrigan being clubbed within the knee in successful ordered via a person who used to be then married to a rival skater.Ms. Glenn, who used to be home-schooled from the second one grade via her senior 12 months of highschool, stated she realized social cues in large part via being round different younger other people on the mall the place she began skating.Her type overtures to friends have been motivated via Ms. Glenn’s reports at competitions right through her early days within the recreation. “I take into account feeling so scared,” she stated. “I believed, I don’t need to really feel like this. If in the future I’m ready to, I need to lend a hand everybody to be at ease.’When the new aircraft crash killed a bunch of 28 athletes, folks and team of workers affiliated with U.S. Determine Skating, “it broke my center,” Ms. Glenn stated — particularly as a result of what she had instructed probably the most younger skaters whilst training with them about 72 hours earlier than the crash.“What hit me so laborious is I instructed them to make buddies that they’d have for the remainder of their existence,” she stated.Previous this month, Ms. Glenn participated in Legacy on Ice, a nationally televised match honoring the sufferers of the aircraft crash. Days earlier than, her grandmother Barbara Glenn, an established rink-side presence at her competitions, died.“She likes to skate with emotion,” Ms. Glenn’s mom stated. “She desires to really feel her emotions out at the ice. I believe that skate used to be very healing for her.” The loss of life of Ms. Glenn’s adolescence canine, Ginger, this month used to be any other emotional blow.In a telephone interview on Saturday, Ms. Glenn stated that the grief she had in recent times skilled had given her a brand new point of view going into the International Championships.“I am getting dissatisfied about my errors,” she stated. “However there are such a large amount of different issues which are extra critical.”

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