America’s 14-year drought of girls’s determine skating Grand Prix champions ended Saturday when Amber Glenn overcame elite Japanese opponents to take first place.
Glenn received the primary ladies’s singles last gold medal for the U.S. since 2010.
She held off Japan’s Mone Chiba, Hana Yoshida, Kaori Sakamoto, Rino Matsuike and Wakaba Higuchi, who completed second by means of sixth in that order. Glenn’s victory got here by a margin of simply 0.69 factors over Chiba.
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At 25, the Texan is the oldest Grand Prix Last winner since Russia’s Irina Slutskaya received her fourth and last title in December 2004 at 26. It units Glenn up as a prime contender on the world championships in Boston March 23-30, lower than a yr out from the 2026 Olympics.
There was a time in Glenn’s profession when it appeared she would obtain a feat like this a lot sooner. In 2014, she received the U.S. junior championships. However she stepped away from skating in 2015 over points with melancholy.
She returned later that yr however had one of many worst performances of her profession with a sixth-place end on the 2015 Autumn Basic Worldwide. She has since referred to as the expertise “a catastrophe,” in accordance with The Washington Submit.
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She took one other go away from the game after that and has since revealed that, throughout that point, she was advised by docs to go away the game “indefinitely.” However she returned to coaching in early 2016. Glenn by no means fairly lived as much as her 2014 junior championship type in senior degree competitions after that.
In December 2019, Glenn introduced she was pansexual, which means she’s romantically drawn to folks no matter gender.
“The concern of not being accepted is a big battle for me,” she advised Dallas Voice. “Being perceived as ‘only a section’ or ‘indecisive’ is a typical factor for bisexual/pansexual ladies. I don’t need to shove my sexuality in folks’s faces, however I additionally don’t need to cover who I’m.”
Glenn cited the North Texas-based ice skating group of Ashley Cain-Gribble and her queer associate Timothy LeDuc as “position fashions” in her accepting her sexuality, in accordance with Dallas Voice.
In an interview with Staff USA in 2021, Glenn stated her expertise rising up as a determine skater launched her to homosexual stereotypes. She later stated she developed “crushes” on feminine skaters.
“Rising up in determine skating, the stereotype was all the time that the lads had been homosexual,” Glenn stated. “At 16, when my mates and coaching mates had been beginning to have a look at the other intercourse, I used to be crushing on each men and women.”
Glenn has solely been identified to have a romantic relationship with males’s determine skater Nathan Chen. The 2 dated in 2016, expressing their affection by means of Instagram posts.
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Gold medalist Amber Glenn of the US poses with a medal through the medal ceremony on the ISU Grand Prix of Determine Skating Last — Grenoble at Patinoire Polesud Dec. 7, 2024, in Grenoble, France. (Daniela Porcelli/Worldwide Skating Union/Worldwide Skating Union)
“My love for you fashioned steadily. Your persona, your voice, your hair, your eyes, your humor, every part. You’re the one particular person I would like to speak to once I’m having a nasty day, the one particular person I can depend on to not choose me. You’re my rock, my greatest pal, and probably the most superb boyfriend I might ask for,” she wrote to Chen in an Instagram publish.
Their relationship is believed to have resulted in 2017, and he or she got here out as pansexual two years after that. Glenn stated that she was afraid being brazenly pansexual “would have an effect on her scores” in an interview with NBC Sports activities in January.
It did not have an effect on her scores sufficient to maintain her from profitable a historic medal Saturday.
Glenn is now in place to make her first Winter Olympics group.
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