When Amber Glenn took the ice at the Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January 2024, many fans waved Pride flags as they cheered on the popular skater. Following her second-place finish in the short program, Glenn captured the gold medal in the women’s singles competition, becoming the first openly queer woman in American skating history to win a national title. Despite some turbulent emotions after winning an event marred by mistakes from top competitors, the 24-year-old champion beamed as she skated a victory lap with a large Progress Pride flag around her shoulders.
Pride flags have been a common sight at Glenn’s competitions since the figure skater publicly came out as bisexual and pansexual in 2019. Now, at 25, she advocates for the LGBTQ+ community and shares mental health resources with her 1.7 million-plus followers on TikTok and Instagram. And she’s not finished making big statements on the ice; rather, the first half of the 2024/25 season has been her most dominant yet.
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In September, Glenn won her first-ever international gold medal at the 2024 Lombardia Trophy in Italy, reaching the top of the podium in a field that included three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto. She followed this season debut with gold medals at both of her November appearances on the international Grand Prix series and advanced to the Grand Prix Final in December — one of the sport’s most prestigious competitions, apart from the ISU World Figure Skating Championships and the Olympics. Glenn continued her golden streak by winning the Grand Prix Final, becoming the first American woman to do so since 2010.
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Glenn’s path to the top hasn’t been smooth. She’s been open about the many challenges she’s faced over the years, including depression, an eating disorder, an ADHD diagnosis, two concussions, and a case of COVID-19 that took her out of the running for the 2022 Olympics (although she was named as an alternate to the U.S. team.)
Now, thanks to her persistence, she’s scoring the consistent wins that had previously eluded her. After moving to Colorado Springs in 2022 to train with coaches Damon Allen and Tammy Gambill, she became the sixth American woman to land a clean triple Axel in competition in October 2023. This season, she performs the difficult jump in both her short and long programs. In a sport that has often been dominated by teenagers, it’s no small feat for a skater to add this element to her repertoire in her 20s.
Glenn largely attributes her recent successes to the work she and her team have done to improve her mental game. “I think [winning] nationals did help my confidence a lot, and that is something I have struggled with for a very long time,” she said in a December 2024 phone interview with INTO. “And then really just looking at things from a mental standpoint has been huge.” Neurotherapy has been a key component of this approach over the past year, helping her to recover from her concussions and overcome past traumas.
Born and raised in Texas, Glenn took up skating around the age of five and began competing for Team USA in 2013. Despite her love for the sport, the pressures of skating at an elite level began to take their toll early on. “I remember at 11 years old, being told to wear all black because it made me look slender and longer on the ice,” she shared. “I remember thinking, ‘Why do I need to look like that?’ That’s when the beauty ideals and expectations and the forming into what a perfect figure skater is kind of started.”
Then, at age 14, she won gold at the 2014 U.S. Junior Championships. “It really put me in a spotlight I had never been in before,” she recalled. “There were more critiques, and honestly, a lot of it was internal expectations and worries. But those came from seeing how people treated the more elite skaters — how people would talk about their bodies, how people would talk about their style and how they looked — and I would put those onto myself since I realized I was starting to get to that level.”
Reaching a crisis point, Glenn spent time in a mental health facility in fall 2015 before competing in her first senior international competition in October. After that, she took a break from skating for eight months. Reflecting on what helped her get through this period, she said, “I got professional help. I had help from my family and friends. I went to therapy. I got on certain medications. I did what was needed to do to survive and to fight that battle within my own mind. I took time away from the sport and came back when I was able to handle it in a healthy way. I had my slip ups, I had my struggles, but it never got back to that point again.”
Glenn hopes that her openness about mental health will help younger skaters chart a healthier path forward. As one of her coaches, Allen has a firsthand perspective on her efforts as a mentor. “We call her the mother of the rink,” he said. “If a skater has a bad lesson or they’re down, she’ll pull them off to the side and give them a little pep talk and build their spirits back up, so they can get back on the next session and feel good about themselves.”
She’s not the only veteran figure skater talking about mental health. Gracie Gold, Glenn’s close friend and 2014 Olympic bronze medalist, candidly shares her own experiences with suicidal ideation, bulimia, and sexual assault in her 2024 book, “Outofshapeworthlessloser: A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out.”
When asked if she’s seen recent improvement in her sport’s approach to mental health, Glenn said, “The difference in just the past 10 years is tremendous. It’s not perfect. There are still issues in the skating community, but we have taken many, many steps forward, and I’ve seen it in these younger athletes. There’s still so much more to do, but there has been a lot of progress and I’m really proud of it.”
Although American skaters such as Johnny Weir and Adam Rippon came out as gay earlier in the 2010s, there weren’t many role models for queer women in figure skating until ice dancer Karina Manta came out as bisexual in 2018. “She was able to be authentically herself on the ice, and she seemed so free,” Glenn said of Manta. “I remember being so excited to see myself represented in some way in figure skating as a female athlete.”
“I try my best…to provide resources for people who might be struggling, to remind people that they’re not alone, and that they can be themselves, at least in my eyes.”
Amber Glenn
Manta retired the following year, but her example inspired Glenn, who was already out to her family and friends, to come out publicly. “Before, I was a little scared that if I came out, it might affect my scores or how people perceive me, but I decided that the positives outweighed the negatives by far,” she recalled. “I decided to make a small remark in an article about my training mate, Timothy LeDuc, thinking it was a small little baby step towards coming out publicly. And it blew up — there were articles around the world talking about it.”
“After that, I went to my first nationals as an out-female figure skater, and I saw people waving the Pride flag. People came up to me with their stories and [shared] how it made them feel like they weren’t as alone,” she continued. “I felt a new type of freedom on the ice. … I was able to bare my soul and just really be myself out there.”
Glenn said it was “incredible” to become the first openly queer woman to win the U.S. Championships in 2024. “To be a representative of the queer community, especially as a female athlete who has been open about my journey and experiences, it just made me look forward to a future to help normalize athletes being themselves in their communities without fear of repercussions or judgment.”
Often wearing a heart-shaped Pride pin on her Team USA jacket at competitions, Glenn also uses her large social media platforms to encourage her followers. “I think social media is such a powerful tool these days, but it can also be such a dangerous place since everyone has an opinion, whether it’s positive or negative,” she said. “I try my best to put as much positive out there as I can, to provide resources for people who might be struggling, to remind people that they’re not alone, and that they can be themselves, at least in my eyes.”
While Glenn’s breakout season has generated plenty of buzz about her chances of making the 2026 Winter Olympics team, she’s focusing on more immediate goals for now: the 2025 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which take place this week, and the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in March. She finished 12th at the 2023 World Championships and 10th in 2024, but she enters this year’s competition stronger than ever.
“I think she’s starting to finally believe in herself and trust her training,” Allen said of Glenn. “She’s the hardest worker at the rink in the world. … She loves training, she loves the day-to-day plan, and you can’t ask more from an athlete than that.”
With the World Championships taking place in the U.S. for the first time since 2016, Glenn will be sure to receive a warm welcome from her many supporters when she skates at Boston’s TD Garden. And no doubt, they’ll be waving Pride flags.♦
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