MILAN — For the second time in as many skates at the Milano Ice Skating Arena, Amber Glenn couldn’t stop the tears. This time, the 26-year-old didn’t even try to hide it.
As the final few notes of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” played, Glenn sank to her knees and clasped her hands to her chest, her eyes watery, her breath labored. She skated off to an ovation from a sympathetic crowd, then held her coach, Damon Allen, in a tight embrace and let the dam burst.
Glenn entered Tuesday’s short program as a medal hopeful, as the highest-rated U.S. figure skater in the world. In a few agonizing seconds it all unraveled.
Glenn bailed on a triple loop required in her program. As a result, she got zero points for an invalid element, giving her an overall score of 67.39, a number so low she buried her head in her hands when it flashed on the big screen.
Glenn’s Olympic medal dreams in 2026 and, likely forever, are over. The oldest American woman to compete in the women’s singles event in nearly a century now sits in a distant 13th place ahead of the 4-minute free skate on Thursday night.
There are so many questions.
What happened?
Was everything OK? Glenn was fussing with her skates multiple times while she was warming up on the ice.
Why didn’t she even attempt the triple loop, knowing what it would cost her?
And no answers, at least for now.
Glenn moved through the mixed zone interview area briskly, eyes red-rimmed, skates still on.
For the second time in five days, an American figure skater with serious medal hopes could not meet expectations. It wasn’t a small jump or one fall. It was an unexpected disaster. Was it physical, mental or both?
Perhaps only Ilia Malinin, who was in attendance on Tuesday night, would know.
It was Malinin who was heavily favored to win men’s individual gold before finishing eighth in a self-inflicted, fall-filled performance. He later told reporters, “I just felt like all the traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head and there’s just like so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there and I just did not handle them.”
Glenn is no stranger to the brutal nature of figure skating. She was a phenomenal talent as a junior skater, picking up Grand Prix medals in 2013 and 2014 as a teenager. But even as she was winning, Glenn battled depression, anxiety and an eating disorder and stepped away from the sport the following year.
She returned in 2016 and by 2019 was medaling on the international stage again. She’s the reigning three-time U.S. champion, the first woman to accomplish that feat since Michelle Kwan.
Glenn, who came out as bisexual and pansexual in 2019, has been a vocal advocate of the LGBTQ+ community and mental health wellness, even when it hasn’t been easy.
Before she took the ice in Milan, Glenn said the LGBTQ+ community was going through a “tough time” during Donald Trump’s presidency in response to a question from a reporter. She said she received death threats and acknowledged that the social media blowback had dimmed some of the shine around her first Olympic experience.
She didn’t skate her best in the team event last week, posting a 138.62 score, later lamenting that she put too much pressure on Malinin to win it for the Americans, which he did. To put her performance in perspective, Glenn skated to a 150.50 at the U.S. Championships earlier this year.
On Tuesday, Glenn was the second-to-last skater to take the ice. She landed her first and most difficult element, the triple axel. She is the only woman who even attempts it and nailing it seems to often dictate how the rest of her skate will go.
Glenn followed the axel with a triple flip and triple toe loop. When she missed the triple loop, it was imperceptible to casual viewers. But Glenn knew. Years of work gone in a single instant.
As she slunk off the ice, we’re left to wonder what happened, what might have been and what she may be thinking.
For now, Malinin’s words will have to suffice.
“People think we’re superhuman,” Malinin said before the Milan Games began. “But we’re not, we’re just human.”