Amber Glenn

Amber Glenn (born October 28, 1999) is an American figure skater, the 2026 Olympic team event gold medalist, the 2024–25 Grand Prix Final champion, and a three-time U.S. national champion (2024, 2025, 2026). She is the first American woman to win three consecutive senior national titles since Michelle Kwan held the title from 2003 to 2005, and on the ice she is one of a small group of women in the world who can land a clean triple Axel in international competition. She trains at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs under head coach Damon Allen, with longtime collaborator Tammy Gambill on the support team. She still represents the Dallas Figure Skating Club.

Glenn’s career has not been a linear climb. After winning the 2014 U.S. junior title at 14 and being labeled a future Olympian, she walked away from competition during the 2015-16 season to address an eating disorder, depression, and anxiety. She came back, was bypassed for the 2018 and 2022 Olympic teams, contracted COVID-19 the week of the 2022 nationals, and watched two Olympic cycles pass without her. In 2019 she came out as bisexual and pansexual in an interview with the Dallas Voice, becoming, when she finally won her first senior national title in 2024 at age 24, the first openly LGBTQ+ U.S. women’s figure skating champion. She added the Grand Prix Final title in December 2024 in Grenoble, France, the first by an American woman since Alissa Czisny’s win in 2010.

The 2025-26 Olympic season was supposed to be Glenn’s coronation, and parts of it were. She defended her national title for a third straight year, won her second consecutive Cup of China, opened the season with gold at the Nebelhorn Trophy, and arrived in Milano Cortina as a legitimate medal contender. The Games themselves were harder. She fought through her team-event free skate to help anchor Team USA to gold, popped the final jump of her individual short program to fall to 13th, and then delivered a 147.52-point free skate (a season’s best, third-best on the night) to climb to fifth overall. At 26, she was the oldest American woman to skate in the singles event at a Winter Olympics in nearly a century. She closed the season with a sixth-place finish at the 2026 World Championships in Prague after entering the free skate in third.

People also read: Alysa Liu (2026 Olympic champion in women’s singles), Ilia Malinin (Three-time World champion and 2026 Olympic team event gold medalist), Michelle Kwan (Five-time World champion and last U.S. woman before Glenn to win three straight national titles), Gracie Gold (Two-time U.S. national champion and 2014 Olympic team event bronze medalist)

Quick Facts

Featured Video

Video courtesy of the International Skating Union’s YouTube channel. Glenn’s interview at the 2024 ISU Grand Prix Final in Grenoble, France.

Early Life & Education

Amber Elaine Glenn was born in Plano, Texas, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb that is not exactly a hotbed of elite figure skating. Her father, Richard, is a Plano police officer who, by her own account, worked up to 30 hours of overtime per week and held side jobs as a hospital and movie-theater security guard to fund her training, which ran into the tens of thousands of dollars per year. Her mother, Cathlene, worked at the front desk of the mall ice rink, served as a nanny for her coach’s family to receive discounted lessons, and sewed Glenn’s costumes herself to keep costs down. The family also bought used skates and second-hand outfits on eBay. Glenn has a younger sister, Brooke, who is now a journalist and wrote a Teen Vogue op-ed defending her sister during the 2026 Olympics.

Her introduction to skating was almost accidental. As a five-year-old, she went with her sister and three cousins to take a beginner lesson at the rink inside the Stonebriar Centre Mall in nearby Frisco, mostly to escape the Texas summer heat. She was hooked immediately. The 2002 Olympics, where 16-year-old Sarah Hughes won the women’s gold, gave her something to picture. By age 8 her coaches Ann Brumbaugh and Ben Shroats were describing her as exceptionally athletic and exceptionally hard on herself. By 11 she had landed every triple jump except the Axel. Glenn was homeschooled from second grade through her senior year of high school to give her enough hours on the ice, and she later earned her diploma from Plano Senior High in 2018 and took classes at Collin College.

The path through her late teens was the part nobody who watched her early career predicted. Glenn has spoken openly about being criticized for her appearance, her body shape, and her costumes as she moved into the senior ranks, and about how that criticism turned into clinical depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder. In late 2015, at 16, she was hospitalized after experiencing suicidal thoughts. She stepped away from competition entirely during the 2015–16 season; her psychiatrist, as she told The Washington Post in 2024, told her to stop skating indefinitely. She came back in early 2016, joined Peter and Darlene Cain in Euless, Texas, and trained alongside fellow skater Timothy LeDuc, the non-binary national champion she has credited with helping her come to terms with her sexuality and identity. The decisions she made in that period (including coming out publicly in 2019 and eventually leaving Texas for Colorado Springs in 2022) are the foundation of every result that came later.

Career Highlights and Milestones

The first chapter of Glenn’s career was a precocious-prodigy story that did not stick to the script. She won the 2014 U.S. junior title at 14, the same year she took bronze at the Junior Grand Prix in France (after another bronze the previous year in the Czech Republic), and her free skate score that day at junior nationals was higher than all but three of the senior women competing. She was, briefly, the next great American hope. Then came the eating disorder, the inpatient stay, the time away, and a gradual rebuild. From 2017 through 2021 she was a respected presence on the senior circuit without ever quite breaking through: 8th at her first U.S. nationals as a senior, then a series of mid-table finishes, then silver at the 2021 U.S. Championships behind Bradie Tennell. She was bypassed for the 2021 Worlds team in favor of bronze medalist Karen Chen, the first such bypass in a non-Olympic year since 2008. The 2022 Olympic cycle ended before it really began when she tested positive for COVID-19 at U.S. nationals.

The breakthrough started with a coaching change. In 2022 Glenn moved to Colorado Springs to work with Damon Allen, who introduced her to neurotherapy, a sports-psychology technique that uses biofeedback to help athletes regulate their nervous systems during competition. She started landing the triple Axel in practice, then in competition for the first time in October 2023 at Skate America, becoming the fourth American woman to land the jump in international senior competition. Three months later, at the 2024 U.S. Championships in Columbus, Ohio, she opened her free skate with a clean triple Axel, made errors in the second half, and won the title anyway when defending champion Isabeau Levito fell three times. It was Glenn’s first senior national title at age 24, on her ninth try, and it made her the first openly LGBTQ+ U.S. women’s national champion.

The 2024–25 season was the one she had been working toward for a decade. She won the Lombardia Trophy and set personal bests across all three segments. She landed a triple Axel in the short program at the Grand Prix de France and posted 78.14 points, the highest short-program score ever recorded by an American woman. She won that event, then won Cup of China two weeks later, then went to Grenoble for the Grand Prix Final, the six-skater championship of the fall season. Grenoble was a pure stress test. She tweaked her back in the short program, reported being “very rough,” and held on to the lead anyway with another clean triple Axel. In the free skate, skating last with five Japanese skaters in front of her, she opened with another clean triple Axel and won, becoming the first American woman to take the Grand Prix Final since Alissa Czisny in 2010. She defended her U.S. title in Wichita the following month, finished fifth at the 2025 Worlds in Boston after a fall on the triple Axel in the short, and helped the U.S. win the 2025 World Team Trophy in Tokyo.

Then came the Olympic year. Glenn opened the 2025–26 season with gold at the Nebelhorn Trophy, won Cup of China for a second straight year (this time in front of an American podium sweep), and arrived at the 2026 U.S. Championships in St. Louis as a heavy favorite. She skated the short program of her career to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” scored 81.97 (a personal-best segment score), and held off Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito to take her third consecutive title, the first American woman to do so since Michelle Kwan from 2003 to 2005. The Olympics in Milano were the high and the low compressed into 12 days. In the team event, she fought through a tentative free skate that she said felt physically off, finished third in her segment, and helped Team USA take gold. In the individual short program, she popped a planned triple loop into a double, sat in 13th place, and looked finished. Two days later, in the free skate, she landed her opening triple Axel, posted 147.52 (a season’s best and the third-highest score of the night), and climbed to fifth overall, sitting in first for over an hour while the final flight skated. At 26 she had become the oldest American woman to compete in Olympic singles figure skating since 1928, and the fifth woman ever to land a triple Axel at an Olympic Games. She closed her season with a sixth-place finish at the 2026 World Championships in Prague.

Selected Career Highlights

• 2013 ISU Junior Grand Prix Czech Skate, bronze medal
• 2014 ISU Junior Grand Prix France, bronze medal
• 2014 U.S. Junior National Champion (age 14)
• 2015–16 medical break from competition
• 2021 U.S. National Championships, silver medal
• 2022 ISU Skate America, bronze medal (first senior Grand Prix medal)
• October 2023, Skate America: first clean triple Axel in international senior competition (4th American woman)
• 2024 U.S. National Champion (first senior title); first openly LGBTQ+ U.S. women’s champion
• 2024 CS Lombardia Trophy gold; 2024 Grand Prix de France gold (record short program score for an American woman, 78.14)
• 2024 ISU Grand Prix Cup of China gold
• December 2024: 2024–25 ISU Grand Prix Final gold, Grenoble, first U.S. woman since Alissa Czisny (2010)
• 2025 U.S. National Champion (back-to-back); 5th at 2025 World Championships in Boston
• 2025 ISU World Team Trophy gold (Tokyo)
• 2025 ISU Challenger Series Nebelhorn Trophy gold (Olympic season opener)
• 2025 ISU Grand Prix Cup of China gold (back-to-back)
• 2026 U.S. National Champion (third consecutive, first U.S. woman since Michelle Kwan 2003–05)
• 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games: gold (team event), 5th (individual)
• 2026 World Figure Skating Championships, Prague: 6th (3rd in short program)

Major Recognition

• 2026 Olympic gold medalist (Team Event, Milano Cortina)
• 2024–25 ISU Grand Prix Final champion (first U.S. woman since 2010)
• 2025 ISU World Team Trophy gold medalist (Team USA)
• 3× U.S. National Champion (2024, 2025, 2026), most consecutive since Michelle Kwan
• First openly LGBTQ+ women’s singles skater to win the U.S. Championships and to represent the U.S. in Olympic singles figure skating
• Fifth woman to land a triple Axel at a Winter Olympic Games
• Selected to the U.S. Figure Skating “Salute to Champions” roster and 2026 Stars on Ice national tour

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Awards and Accolades

Career Stats & Records

SP = Short Program; FS = Free Skate. Asterisk (*) indicates a personal-best segment score or a record for an American woman. Selected significant seasons shown to reflect the senior breakthrough (2020–21), comeback period (2022–23 to 2023–24), Grand Prix Final season (2024–25), and Olympic season (2025–26). Glenn’s international personal-best total score is 215.54, set at the 2024 Cup of China in Chongqing. Scores sourced from U.S. Figure Skating and ISU; minor variations may appear across protocol reporting.

Major Competition History

Net Worth, Income, & Lifestyle

Social Media & Online Presence

Fan communities on social media (unofficial)

NOTE: In addition to the official accounts listed above, many fan-run pages, clip accounts, and statistical tracker accounts exist across all platforms. These are not confirmed to be affiliated with Amber Glenn. Links and usernames can change at any time. Always verify a social media handle through Glenn’s verified accounts before following, subscribing, or purchasing through any source claiming affiliation.

Trivia & Lesser-Known Facts

• Glenn first stepped on the ice at age five with her sister and three cousins at a beginner lesson at the Stonebriar Centre Mall rink in Frisco, Texas. The family was looking for an indoor activity to escape the Texas summer heat.
• Her dog, Uki, is named after the Magic: The Gathering card “Ukkima, Stalking Shadow.” Magic is a long-running hobby. Other off-ice interests include archery, cosplay, drawing, cooking, anime, and Star Wars (she has multiple Star Wars-themed tattoos and one Naruto tattoo).
• Glenn has spoken publicly about being diagnosed with ADHD and about being hospitalized in late 2015 for suicidal ideation tied to depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder. She has been a longtime advocate for mental-health resources for elite athletes.
• In 2017, Glenn worked with the creative team behind the Yuri on Ice film during pre-production and has cited the show as a piece of art that has meant a lot to her.
• Her 2025–26 short program is set to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” a music selection Adam Rippon and Johnny Weir publicly praised when the program debuted; Weir himself skated to the same song roughly 15 years earlier. Her free skate is set to “I Will Find You” by Audiomachine and “The Return” by Clann.
• Glenn earned her high school diploma from Plano Senior High School in 2018 (after being homeschooled from second grade onward) and has taken classes at Collin College.

Quotes

“I take a lot of pride in being one of the few women that can do a triple Axel. It is a very difficult thing to do as a grown woman, and as someone who has been skating for as long as I had to learn something new. I just kind of want to show that no matter what age you start out, no matter where you are in your skating career, you’re going to be capable of great things if you really try.”

– Amber Glenn, Olympics.com (January 2025)

“I’m exhausted. It has been a whirlwind of a season, and I’ve kind of struggled with this imposter syndrome. Just, ‘Oh, no, no, I’m not winning, that’s not me.’ And I’m just happy my hard work is finally showing.”

– Amber Glenn, after winning the 2024 Grand Prix Final, Associated Press via ESPN (December 2024)

“I know that a lot of people will say, ‘You’re just an athlete, stick to your job and shut up about politics,’ but politics affects us all. It’s something that I will not just be quiet about, because it is something that affects us in our everyday lives.”

– Amber Glenn, Team USA pre-Olympics press conference, via PEOPLE (February 2026)

“Thank you everyone for the love and support. I’m okay. If anything I’m mentally, emotionally, physically exhausted after a season of extreme highs and lows. I did what I set out to do six years ago. Land a triple Axel and go to the Olympics and nothing will take that away from me.”

– Amber Glenn, on X after the 2026 World Championships in Prague, via Sports Illustrated (March 2026)

“That six-year-old girl that never thought I’d ever be here, so I just told myself to go out there, do your job.”

– Amber Glenn to NBC after her free skate at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, Olympics.com (February 2026)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: How old is Amber Glenn?
A: Amber Glenn was born on October 28, 1999, which makes her 26 years old as of 2026.

Q: Where is Amber Glenn from?
A: Glenn is from Plano, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. She moved to Colorado Springs in 2022 to train at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center.

Q: Who coaches Amber Glenn?
A: Her head coach is Damon Allen, who began working with Glenn after her 2022 move to Colorado Springs. Tammy Gambill is also part of her coaching team. She previously trained with Peter and Darlene Cain in Euless, Texas, from 2016 to 2022.

Q: Did Amber Glenn medal at the 2026 Olympics?
A: Yes. Glenn won team event gold with Team USA at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games on February 8, 2026. In the individual women’s singles competition on February 19, she finished fifth overall after climbing from 13th place after the short program with the third-best free skate of the night.

Q: What is Amber Glenn’s signature jump?
A: The triple Axel. Glenn began attempting it in 2021 and first landed it cleanly in international senior competition at Skate America in October 2023, becoming the fourth American woman to do so. She has landed the jump in competition many times since, including at the 2024 Grand Prix Final and the 2026 Olympics.

Q: What is Amber Glenn’s height?
A: Glenn stands 5 ft 6 in (167 cm), per ISU and U.S. Figure Skating roster listings.

Q: What endorsement deals does Amber Glenn have?
A: As of 2026, Glenn has confirmed partnerships with AmLactin (skincare), Bloom Nutrition (the brand’s first athlete partner, signed in January 2026), and Starbucks. She is represented by Range Sports.

Upcoming Projects / Season Outlook

• Stars on Ice 2026 Tour (U.S., spring 2026): Glenn is scheduled to headline her second consecutive Stars on Ice tour following the World Championships. Tour dates and lineup subject to change.
• 2026–27 ISU Grand Prix assignments (expected fall 2026): Senior assignments are typically announced by the ISU in late spring. Glenn has indicated she plans to continue competing post-Olympics, though she has also said the season’s intensity has been “exhausting.”
• Bloom Nutrition Glacier Crush campaign (extending through 2026): Glenn was named Bloom’s first athlete partner ahead of the Olympics; campaign content is reported to roll out across the year.
• Mental health and LGBTQ+ advocacy work (ongoing): Glenn continues to speak publicly on mental-health resources and queer representation in figure skating, including via partnerships with Athlete Ally and Team USA’s mental-health programming.
• Ice show appearances (summer 2026, scheduled): Annual Sun Valley On Ice and other domestic ice shows. Specific dates subject to change based on her competitive schedule.

Interviews & Features

• ESPN, “Figure skater Amber Glenn is ready for her Olympic moment” (January 2026), a long-form feature on her path from Plano to Colorado Springs and the breakthrough triple Axel.
• Olympics.com, “Amber Glenn proud of Olympic fight as she leaves Milano Cortina 2026 with team gold and momentum” (February 2026), Gracie Gold’s exit interview after the individual event.
• NBC News, “Amber Glenn finishes just off the podium after a high-scoring free skate” (February 2026), reporting from Milano on her fifth-place finish.
• PEOPLE, “Olympic Figure Skater Amber Glenn Steps Away from Social Media After Receiving ‘Threats'” (February 2026), on the harassment she faced after speaking on LGBTQ+ rights pre-Olympics.
• The Washington Post, profile on Glenn’s mental health and return (2024), the most-cited piece of long-form journalism on the eating-disorder period and her return.

Public Appearances, Games, & Events

• 2024 ISU Grand Prix Final (December 2024): Glenn won gold in Grenoble, France, becoming the first American woman to win the Grand Prix Final since 2010.
• 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships (January 2026): Glenn won her third consecutive national title in St. Louis, Missouri, scoring a personal-best 81.97 in the short program before sealing the title in the free skate.
• 2026 Olympic Winter Games (February 2026): Glenn made her Olympic debut at the Milano Ice Skating Arena in Milano, Italy, winning team gold and finishing fifth in the individual event.
• 2026 World Figure Skating Championships (March 2026): Glenn finished sixth in Prague, Czech Republic, after sitting third following the short program.
• 2026 Stars on Ice Tour (spring 2026): Glenn headlined multiple stops alongside Olympic teammates, with U.S. dates including Boston, New York, Detroit, and Bay Area appearances.
• Pre-Olympic Team USA media events (October 2025 to February 2026): Glenn appeared at the Team USA Media Summit in New York (October 28, 2025) and at U.S. Olympic Committee press events in Milano during the Games.