Amber Glenn has taken 2020 by storm.
The 20-year-old figure skater began the calendar year by placing fifth at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships – her best result in five senior appearances at the U.S. Championships – and receiving her first assignment to the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2020 in Seoul, where she finished ninth.
Eight months and one pandemic later Glenn is continuing her stellar year. In July, she made headlines for joining the short list of U.S. ladies who have landed a triple Axel, and earlier this month Glenn placed third at U.S. Figure Skating's International Selection Pool (ISP) Points Challenge for perhaps the most promising result of her career.
"It's great because I know that even though it is a great placement and I am happy with what I did, I know I can do so much better, so it gives me even more drive to keep pushing," Glenn said of her Points Challenge performance. "I know what my best is and I know where that would land me."
Less than six points out of second place, her total was 191.20. Glenn finished behind 2020 U.S. silver medalist Mariah Bell and 2018 Olympian Bradie Tennell, and more than seven points ahead of two-time reigning U.S. champion Alysa Liu and 2018 Olympian Karen Chen.
Her progress heading into the virtual competition, including working toward landing that triple Axel in competition for the first time, was derailed when she fractured her orbital bone during cryotherapy in September. Glenn said she is healing well and all that remains is a scar underneath her eye and one on her chin.
The injury caused her to miss the first ISP Points Challenge opportunity and one week on the ice, then she had just two weeks to train for the second opportunity. Avoiding spins as much as possible while she recovered, the competition programs seen by judges and fans were her first full run-throughs in three weeks.
"I felt like I really pulled through mentally, especially in that free skate where I really fought to keep on my feet and to keep pushing. Before I hit my face, I had been running clean free skates, I had been doing what I needed to do," Glenn said.
"Of course it was unfortunate that I didn't do my (triple) Axel in the short, but it was my first time trying it in a high-pressure situation, along with lack of training it in the month prior."
Here's a look at how, why and when Glenn learned the coveted jump:
The Reason
More than six years after winning the U.S. junior title, which was followed by several seasons of average results, Glenn has reemerged as a prominent name on the U.S. ladies scene thanks to recent results and the potential of this triple Axel. Considered the sport's most difficult jump, the Axel begins with a forward takeoff and has an extra half rotation. Only three U.S. ladies have landed a triple Axel in international competition.
Once rinks closed and she was forced off the ice in March, Glenn spent time reevaluating her career.
"I thought, OK, I'm 20 now, I don't know how much time left I have in skating, I could get injured at any point, I don't want to leave off here," she remembered. "I know I can do more."
After last mastering a new jump at age 11 – the triple Lutz – Glenn realized she yearned for that feeling of accomplishment and set out to master the triple Axel, which could lead to two more goals she set.
"I want to get a triple Axel, I want to place at U.S. Championships and I want to try and go to the next Olympics," Glenn declared. "Beforehand, it was, I'll do my best with what I have, and I finally thought, I want this to happen so I'm going to make it happen."
The Timeline
Attempting to learn triple Axels on and off "for fun" for nearly nine years, Glenn became a touch more serious about it last November and was trying them out of the jump harness, then took a hard fall in December and, for fear of injury, put it out of her mind until after Four Continents in February. She fully committed in March.
Glenn's rink in Euless, Texas, closed March 10. She returned to the ice May 18 and landed her first triple Axel less than two months later on July 10.
The Work
Once Glenn committed, she went all the way.
"I worked my butt off during quarantine – off-ice, mental training, I did as much as I possibly could because I knew if I did that, I could get it," she said. "I don't mean just double Axels, double loops, triple loops; I mean jumping on and off boxes, doing agility work, doing injury prevention constantly, making sure that I stayed on a schedule.
"That was huge for me – I saw people around me sleeping in all day, and I still woke up early in the morning, went over to the track, worked out, went back home, ate lunch, went back to the track, worked out again, came home, while also maintaining a mental side of not absolutely destroying my body and not getting too focused to where I'm miserable. I had to make sure I had a good balance."
The most challenging part of nailing the jump was not getting discouraged and maintaining a positive outlook.
"I took some rough falls and I would get a day to where it's really close, then the next day it's back to being cheated or falling, then the next day I'll get even closer, then the next day it'll be worse again," Glenn explained. "It was just a matter of not giving up on that and sticking to the plan and trusting the process."
The Reaction
"It was euphoric, it was incredible," she said of landing her first triple Axel. "I had been landing them two-footed and a bit cheated, but I knew I was close and it was in my reach. I was getting strange déjà vu of when I was getting my double Axel when I was a kid."
Glenn stood frozen in shock upon landing that first one. No one else witnessed the jump at the time, but she had captured it on video. Once she showed others, a group hug and celebration commenced between Glenn, her coaches Peter Cain and Darlene Cain, and training mates Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc.
She then repeated the jump a few more times that day to solidify that she does, in fact, have a triple Axel in her arsenal.
Glenn posted
video of the jump on social media on July 15 and received what she called an "insane" amount of attention from the skating community.
The Competition Plan
Glenn intends on including the jump in her short program this season, which is set to Madilyn Bailey's "Scars." It is her same short from the 2019-20 season that was choreographed by Cordero Zuckerman.
"I was not ready to let it go," Glenn said. "I connect with it so well, and I had decided already, before COVID, that I was going to keep the short. I love it so much. I'm comfortable with this program, I know the music, I can recite it in my sleep."
Her free skate, which could eventually include the Axel, is set to "Rain in Your Black Eyes" and was choreographed and mixed by Misha Ge.
After going for the triple Axel in her Points Challenge short program, but singling the jump instead, Glenn is eager to land it Oct. 23 at Skate America® in Las Vegas. She thinks she is cleanly landing 70 percent of her triple Axel attempts, but had a much higher success rate before her accident last month.
"All my triples I'm able to do night or day, half dead, half asleep, I could do them under almost any circumstance," she explained. "With triple Axel, I have to make sure I had the right amount of sleep, that I did my warm-up correctly, that I made sure to warm up my knees, ankles, hips. It's definitely something that it's not as consistent as my regular triples would be, but it's still up there."
