Above: Two-time U.S. champion Amber Glenn performs at the 2025 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Photo credit Danielle Earl/U.S. Figure Skating.
By Rachel Lutz
Amber Glenn knows a little something about a pressure-packed performance. At 2023 Skate America in Allen, Texas, even her first-grade teacher was in the audience while Glenn was trying to manage her concussion recovery — and the Texas native was still expected to deliver for her home audience.
“The beginning of both my programs were great,” Glenn told SKATING magazine, recalling that event and comparing it to the upcoming World Figure Skating Championships. “That was something I felt like brought me up, rather than made me feel worse.”
She was fifth overall in that event, but more importantly, hit her first clean triple Axel in competition, becoming just the sixth U.S. woman to ever land the jump.
“I feel like that was a good peek behind the curtain of what this might feel like,” she said of Boston Worlds.
Glenn also said she understands what the buzz will feel like from the crowd’s perspective, having been in attendance in Boston in 2016, the last time the World Championships were hosted in the United States.
This time, though, she’ll be center ice.
At least, coach Damon Allen added, she will get to avoid any long-haul flights that are more taxing on both the mind and body.
“It’ll be less stressful body-wise, less fatigue getting to the event,” he said. “I think it’s going to be easier for Amber, only having to travel a couple hours. It’s a lot better than having to travel 16 [hours].”
In the past, Glenn allowed for creeping doubt that she belonged at certain events. This season, after winning both her Grand Prix assignments, she won December’s Grand Prix Final and proved to herself what she is capable of in Boston.
“I felt it at the Final, and I’m hoping that I’ll feel it this Worlds as well, to where there isn’t any doubt that I belong there,” she said. “There is literal, hard proof and facts for the reason I should be there and why I should be considered to be at the top. Not just ‘I have the potential to …’ No – I’ve shown that I quite literally can in reality."
“It’s the first time that I’ve gone into a World Championships knowing that I can be at the top, toward the top, on the podium.”
Getting to this point with this much confidence has not come easy for Glenn. She revealed she experienced a spike in her depression and anxiety following the Jan. 29 tragedy, where 28 athletes, coaches and family members lost their lives traveling aboard American Airlines Flight 5342 while returning from the National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas.
“I was trying to make sure the people around me were OK,” she said of the period following the successful defense of her title in Wichita. “I had so many conflicting thoughts and emotions. ‘This is so devastating and upsetting,’ but also ‘oh my gosh, why should I be feeling like this? It’s not about me. It’s about the victims and the people closest to them. I have no right to feel this way.’ But emotions are emotions. I can’t just deny them.”
To manage, Glenn said she leaned on her community and continued to be grateful for where she is.
“I’ve been more aware of my community and more caring and thoughtful than ever – which can be draining,” she said.
“I need to remember that I do need to focus on myself, my goals and my accomplishments, because that’s my dream that I’ve had,” she continued. “Honoring their dream by trying to accomplish mine as well. We’ll carry their memories and their dreams with us, but we also can’t put our lives on hold completely. That would be not what I feel they would’ve wanted.”
Glenn skated to Andra Day’s “Rise Up” to open the Legacy on Ice benefit show on March 2 in Washington, D.C., an event that raised more than $1 million to benefit the families, loved ones and first responders impacted by the tragedy. She shared on social media that her performance not only honored the victims, but also her grandmother, Barbara, who passed on Feb. 28.
With all of this going on off the ice, it’s hard to remember that Glenn has an important task still at hand: training for the World Championships.
She said she has been putting in time at the gym and physical therapy to get her hip healthy. It’s nothing major, she said, simply the result of a long season and throwing triple Axels.
Ice time has been limited at her local rink, too, which in February hosted a hockey tournament and the U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships. One weekend, instead of trying to find ice at home, she flew to New York to spend time with short program choreographer Kaitlyn Weaver, a three-time ice dance national champion for Canada.
“We had some private ice early in the morning,” Glenn said. “Got to see the sunrise, it was beautiful. We did some stuff that we think will up the musicality and the execution. It’s been more about detail touchups and GOEs [grades of execution]. That’s the name of the game.”
While Glenn confirmed there are no changes to her planned technical content for either program, Allen reinforced the importance of the time she spent in New York.
“They worked some parts of the short program to make it feel a little more fresh, so everything wasn’t the same the whole season,” he said. “New parts and new pieces of choreography that are really cool that I like. A little sharper and more exciting.”
Other than that, Glenn said, “I’m just sticking to doing what has been working all year.”
As Glenn remains undefeated this season, it certainly seems to be working.
