While in Nagoya at the Grand Prix Final, Amber Glenn was on an extracurricular mission.
She wanted to check out a store to find a niche card game, one of her hobbies. One of the personal cubbyholes into which she darts off-ice.
Said Alysa Liu: “Can I come with you?”
So the two top American skaters made memories together for an hour and a half in the land of the rising sun.
What a pair.
They are polar opposites. They are Yin and Yang. Light and dark. Shade and sun.
They have come to the US championships in St. Louis this coming week from different vapour trails. Liu was a prodigy, finishing third at the world championships when she was only 16. She skyrocketed and then flamed out for a time.
Glenn has travelled a slow grind, never having won an international event until she was 24. Neither has been to an Olympics. Should Glenn qualify this week, she will be an OIympian for the first time at age 26, six years older than Liu.
While Liu now skates with a joyful freedom, Glenn battles anxiety, depression, ADHD. With help, and hard graft, she has found ways to overcome this. It is a lifelong journey for her. Not something cured in an instant.
It is Glenn’s heart that is most remarkable in this quest.
She is the reigning U.S. champion. Two-time U.S. champion. “That’s still such a crazy thing to hear,” she muses during a conference call last week. “I never thought that would happen. It’s just a joy to be doing what I love.”
What would the whole Olympic thing be like, in her mind? Glenn thinks of Gracie Gold winning US nationals in 2014, then going on to the Olympics. Bradie Tennell rather the same, but bursting out in 2018 and winning US nationals and going on to the Olympics. Both in triumphant moments. Both so young.
“Who doesn’t dream of something like that?” Glenn says. “But I have to remind myself that was for them, the first national title. They were teenagers, and it was this big moment.
“My path has been so different from theirs,” she said. She has to tell herself that she is living her own story, a far cry from others. Her heart goes to the absolute vision of sitting in the kiss and cry and screaming: “Yes,” she won and she’s off to Milan. But she has to remind herself that she just needs to do what she has to do. “I want to go out there and have two performances that I enjoy and that I’m proud of, and where ever that lands me, I know that I feel good and I’m happy about it and I know if I do my job, more than likely I will be in Milan. That is more than I ever thought I could accomplish.”
With her deadly consistent triple Axel, and consistent everything-else, Glenn was almost unbeatable last season. She won both of her Grand Prix (China and France) and the Grand Prix Final. This past December, at the Final, she popped her triple Axel in the short program, which put her out of contention for a medal, finishing fourth. And she had to deal with that.
Her coaches knew what to do.
“I came back from the Final invigorated,” she said. “I had so many things that I wanted to work on. I came back ready to go, go, go, go.”
Coach Damon Allen had to say to her: “That’s great. Chill out. You’re fine.”
They talked about it all. Out of it came the reality: “I am good the way I am,” she said. “I don’t need to be more than I am.”
She didn’t love how she felt at the Grand Prix Final. Yes, she made the obvious big mistake “that threw me to the back of the bus,” she said. She didn’t feel great in the free skate either. She was mentally tough, but she did not enjoy the experience. So what she wanted to work on was feeling good, and being happy enjoying how she felt at US nationals.
Another learning moment. At Grand Prix Final, as she trained, she watched this amazing Japanese kid Ami Nakai (who finished second in the Final) and Rinka Watanabe both landing amazing triple Axels. And doing other things. She wanted to do those other things. But she realized that it was not time to start working on them at a Grand Prix Final. She had to stick to the plan.
The past two years, Glenn has excelled by focusing on proving herself mentally, and proving that she can be consistent. She hasn’t had a score worse than 200 in two years. But she wants to enjoy her next two performances, because they are going to be some of the most important of her career. And the most memorable ones of her career.
“I feel that I’m in a good place mentally,” she said. “I’m in a good place physically. And I just want to go out there and take it all in at nationals.”
Take a trip down Glenn’s path and she’s candid, forthcoming, complete in her self-assessments. Her words can ring a bell in others who listen. She admits she’s been her own worst enemy in the past. At one point in her career, she realized she needed help and sought it. That made all of the difference.
It’s all part of the mental struggle. “It’s something that doesn’t limit me to any degree any more,” she said. “But it does affect me sometimes.” She’s in an aesthetic sport that requires perfection: you can always be better at something.
“I actually came to the realization recently – and I think it was affecting me at the Final – was that I was equating my potential to perfection,” she said. “My potential is to do the absolute best I can, and be perfect all at one time. And being maxed out levels at one time, and that is what my potential is. And I want to reach my potential.”
She’s a competitive athlete, but at competition, she can’t compare herself to others. With the help of a sports psychologist, she’s trying to filter out those thoughts.
She’s at a healthy point right now, but that doesn’t mean all will be perfect forever afterwards. She’s not “this beaming light of everything is great all the time,” she said. “I still have things I struggle with. I have anxiety over non-skating things. I have days where I can feel that mental health just creeping in again, or the depression, or anything like that.
“It’s not that I don’t struggle with it. It’s a whole other layer on top of being an athlete in the public eye.”
She knows she’s a role model for children. Because of that, anybody wouldn’t want to show weakness instinctually. Don’t you want to show that all is well, after getting help? But no. That’s not always what will resonate with the youngsters, she says. “Seeing some of those struggles and seeing some of those things can help them acknowledge, like hey: ‘I have the same thing. I feel the same way sometimes.’”
And it’s okay. Sometimes in the world of social media, some people forget that she is just human. Or that if she makes a mistake, she’s having a dip in handling her mental strength. “Sometimes when I make mistakes, it’s like no, I’ve just rushed the jump that jump that time.”
Her mental health issues don’t cause every mistake she makes. It’s too simplistic an assessment. Mental health advocates have their ups and downs, too.
But Glenn is not only a beacon for personal triumphs, she’s making a difference in her relationships to others. Everybody knows relations between female athletes have sometimes been chippy. Glenn sees beyond. Perhaps it’s because of her personal struggles that she sees clearly other things forgotten in the race to the top.
Back to Liu, who has been landing triple Axels again in her training for the U.S. nationals. And she’s perhaps even a greater threat if she includes it. To Glenn, that doesn’t matter off the ice.
Glenn has created a new atmosphere between herself and her peers.
Glenn says she’s between two generations of American female skaters. She’s not young like Liu and Isabeau Levito, and she’s not from the same era as Gracie Gold and Ashley Wagner. She’s in between those worlds. She’s a connection between the two.
But Glenn knows. “I saw some of the tension between some of the athletes that were a bit older than me, and how it affected their relationship to the sport, with each other and with themselves,” she says. “The comparisons just got really out of hand.
“I just wanted to be able to feel comfortable in the locker room,” she says. “And I’m a nervous talker, so it’s nice to be able to communicate with some of the people that know exactly what you are going through.
“There are not many people on this earth that experience the same type of pressure, and emotion that young figure skaters do,” she said. “And those girls in the locker room, they are some of the few people that can relate. That are going through that same thing that you are.”
Being able to have a good healthy team relationship with those people has benefitted all of them tremendously. “We bring each other up, instead of trying to step on each other to get ahead,” Glenn said.
She has learned a lot from Liu and she can appreciate what she’s all about. She saw Liu as a precocious 10-year-old at a camp. She saw her leap up the ranks at the speed of light. She saw her fall out of love with the sport, and then fall back in love again. While Liu was away from the sport, she got to experience life outside the arena. “I’m so excited for her that she got her driver’s license,” Glenn said.
What makes Liu different from any other female skater is her attitude to the sport. “I think it’s a great example,” Glenn said.
Instead of being jealous of it, Glenn is trying take some of that attitude into her own heart because “she’s just her without apologizing for it,” Glenn says. “It’s so endearing to see. And she’s just been a great friend to have.”
It has been great for Glenn to have a teammate with such a positive attitude. It can’t help but rub off. And besides, Glenn has an extra pair of tights if Liu rips a whole in hers and if Liu bounces around, not realizing the schedule, Glenn has it in hand. “It’s type A, Type B people side by side and having a little bit of both usually ends up being a perfect match,” Glenn said.
They both bring a new perspective to what a skating career looks like over time.
But Glenn is going to leave the sport with something even more important. She’s made the skating world a better place for her being there.
Wonderful article.