When Amber Glenn was named the top U.S. women’s figure skater for the second consecutive year in January, she collapsed in tears, releasing a great amount of pressure that had been weighing on her strong shoulders.
This week, she aims to add another gold medal to her collection at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston. If she succeeds, Amber would become the first American figure skater to win the women’s World Championship title in almost 20 years.
It would be her biggest victory yet, but just the latest in a series of milestones for a woman who has landed the triple axel jump in every one of her competitions this season — a season filled with both triumphs and tragedies, following a plane crash in January that killed 11 figure skaters, some of whom she had shared the ice with just days before their deaths. If Amber wins or even medals at the World Championships, she would be the first openly L.G.B.T.Q. woman to do so in a sport where female athletes typically conform to the image of a traditional ice queen. In contrast, Amber has built her profile by embracing what makes her different.
She is a pansexual figure skater who jumps with the power of a pole vaulter, styles her hair after bold pop stars, collects lightsabers, and is poised to become America’s next big skating star at 25 — an age at which most of her peers have already retired.
A Story of Perseverance On a Saturday evening in February, Amber darted around the ice rink at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, skating at high speeds as her short-program music — “This Time” by Janet Jackson — played from the speakers. She was in New York to fine-tune some of her choreography before the World Championships this month.
Amber’s youthful freckles contrasted with her graphic winged eyeliner, and her blonde hair trailed behind her like a parachute as she skated.
Earlier that day, Amber shared in an interview that the last eight months had “been a lot.” She began training for the current season last spring and won her first gold medal last September at the Lombardia Trophy competition in Bergamo, Italy. She hasn’t stopped winning since. Over the course of several weeks last November and December, Amber traveled extensively, securing first place in three major competitions, including the Grand Prix Final in Grenoble, France, where on December 7, she became the first American woman to win the title in 14 years.
Two weeks later, she clinched gold at Nationals in Wichita, Kansas, by a slim margin. However, Amber’s career, which began more than two decades ago at an ice rink inside a shopping mall, has not been a straightforward path to the top.
At 14, she became the U.S. junior women’s champion. About a year later, Amber was hospitalized for depression and anxiety, which caused her to take a five-month break from skating. At the time, she was also restricting her eating, consuming just one or two Lean Cuisine meals a day. In more recent years, she has suffered multiple severe concussions and been haunted by mistakes, such as missed jumps, which she has attributed to anxiety. Many of her injuries and stumbles have occurred on live television.
Terry Gannon, an NBC sports commentator who has covered national figure-skating events since the 1990s, attributed Amber’s success this season to perseverance.
“I feel like I’ve lived this journey with her and watched her through the years, knowing she had the ability but coming up short,” said Gannon, who described Amber’s story as emotionally satisfying for viewers. “Now we see her break through at the highest level,” he added. Her successful season is reminiscent of the era when American skaters like Dorothy Hamill and Michelle Kwan dominated the sport. As a rising star in women’s singles, figure skating’s most prominent event, Amber has generated excitement ahead of next year’s Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. “It’s hugely important to the success of American skating to have a star who has a chance to win at the Olympics,” Gannon said. Sasha Cohen was the last American to do so, earning a silver medal at the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006. If Amber’s winning streak continues into next year, when Team USA skaters are chosen, the country may have its best chance at an Olympic medal in years.
Mastering the Triple Axel On the ice, Amber is known for certain characteristics: landing jumps with her arms stretched in a dramatic V-shape, wearing dark lipstick like a prima ballerina, and skating with a mane of multiple ponytails that she says is inspired by pop star Kesha.
While she skates with an effortless elegance, her approach to the sport has often been described as “explosive” and “aggressive.” “That is usually a trademark of men’s skating, as they are allowed to be aggressive and muscled,” said Kaitlyn Weaver, 35, a champion ice dancer and two-time Olympian who is now Amber’s choreographer.
Amber said she had focused on athleticism rather than “conforming to look smaller.” This approach is embodied by her mastery of the triple axel, a jump in which skaters hurl themselves face-first into the air and rotate 1,260 degrees before landing backward on one foot. Amber has been the only female skater of her level to land a ratified triple axel this season in international competitions, according to the International Skating Union.
Amber’s free skate program at last year’s World Championships began with a perfect triple axel but ended with several falls on the ice. She ultimately finished in 10th place, a result she attributed to her anxiety flaring up during the program. “My brain didn’t know the difference between competing and having to fight a bear,” she said.
Last summer, Amber began incorporating neurotherapy into her two-hour practices to manage her performance anxiety. She wires herself to a device that tracks her heart rate and brain waves, helping her visualize when her anxiety spikes.
Caroline Silby, a sport psychology consultant who works with skaters worldwide, suggested neurotherapy to Amber. “Throughout her career, she’s always had moments of brilliance; it’s not like she wasn’t doing it,” Silby said. “She just wasn’t doing it consistently.”
She added, “When the whole world talks about how you can’t do the second half of your program, it’s about ‘OK, how can we get the brain to stay quiet?’”
Embracing Her Identity Amber’s mother, Cathlene Glenn, said there were always signs that her daughter was different from other girls her age when she was growing up in Plano, Texas. Among them was Amber’s preference for dinosaur toys over dolls, her mother recalled. By the time Amber turned 8, coaches were noting her exceptional talent. By 11, she had mastered every triple jump except the axel.
However, in a sport where even an intermediate pair of skates can cost $800, the financial burden of keeping Amber skating at a high level created tension for her parents. To save on lessons and rink fees, her mother worked as a nanny for a former coach of Amber’s and at the front desk of the mall ice rink. Her father, Richard Glenn, a law enforcement officer, worked overtime and took on extra jobs doing security at movie theaters and hospitals.
Amber, for her part, said she didn’t tell her parents when she outgrew her skates. “I still have the bunions and scars to prove it,” she said.
These days, she wears skates that can cost around $1,500, which she receives for free from Jackson Ultima, who features her image in promotional campaigns.
At Chelsea Piers, Amber’s skate blades were pushed to the limit as she tore into the ice with expansive lunges and razor-sharp turns. She typically practices at the Broadmoor World Arena, a U.S. Olympic training site in Colorado Springs, not far from her home in the city. Above the rink, a flag with Amber’s name flies next to those of other American champions like Peggy Fleming.
Amber’s reputation as a different kind of skater was solidified in 2019 when she came out as pansexual in an article for Dallas Voice magazine. Months later, she arrived at Nationals in 2020 to see dozens of fans in the stands holding Pride flags in her honor. Weaver, who had not yet become Amber’s choreographer at the time, recalled watching the scene on TV and “weeping.” In 2021, Weaver became the first Olympic female skater to publicly come out as queer. “We work against a stereotype,” she said, comparing openly queer female skaters to openly gay N.F.L. players.
Having learned to be more comfortable in her own skin, Amber now holds a pride flag when she skates a victory lap at competitions. Lately, she’s been contemplating ways to help people like herself, especially at a time when Amber said “identities are being erased.”
“Sometimes, I’m looking at the world, and we are taking so many steps back,” she said. “I want to be part of the people who keep us moving forward.”
She was speaking on a video call in late February from her apartment in Colorado Springs, which Amber shares with her dog, Uki, a schipperke who, like Amber, has learned to spin on command.
Tragedies Amid Triumphs Around Amber’s apartment are items that reflect her personality. There are lightsabers hanging on the wall (she is a fan of “Star Wars”) and a cabinet filled with Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon cards. Instead of real flowers, she decorates with Lego floral arrangements because of her travel schedule. “It’s nice to have ones that stick around,” she said.
She moved to Colorado Springs in the summer of 2022 to work with top coaches and to take advantage of free physical therapy and personal training sessions offered by the U.S. Olympic Training Center.
Just months before she arrived, she had lost a major sponsor, which took away her funding. But Amber, who now manages her career independently, has worked hard to pay for lessons and equipment. When she won gold in France at the Grand Prix Final in December, she described the victory as her “personal breakthrough,” adding that the feeling was bittersweet because her longtime coach and mentor, John Coughlin, had died by suicide earlier that year.
Just a week after Amber’s win, the plane crash in northern Georgia took the lives of 11 figure skaters, including two of Amber’s close friends, Jason Brown and Olivia Serafini. They had trained and competed together for years. Despite the grief, Amber chose to compete at Nationals.
“I could either sit in my grief and let it destroy me, or I could allow the love and lessons I’ve learned from the people I’ve lost to help me get through it,” she said.
The weight of this grief was evident in her performances in the following weeks, when she stumbled during her long program in Kansas.
While Amber would not yet be able to take the long-term time off that her body needed, her personal challenges didn’t prevent her from achieving her potential.
“I’m not going to let it break me,” she said.