One bad turn can ruin years of training in figure skating, and Amber Glenn spent the remainder of her week in the Olympics skating like somebody who was not going to allow a square on a score card to become her.
The face of Glenn remained as recognizable in Milan as ever some of that which contributes to the popularity of the U.S. champion. She is not skating down like a closed book. She skates as though telling the truth as it happens, whether it is nerves or relief or that adrenaline rush of a takeoff that goes wrong. That clarity trailed after a brief course that had taken a wrong turn to a free skate that eventually resembled the one that people toured going to Glenn.
The trouble began on Tuesday, when she nail-headed the tough. Glenn began her brief program with a triple axel, the type of forward entrance jump that only a very small group of women at this level even attempt, and one that got the building buzzing. Several moments later, the routine was shifted towards something more recognizable a triple loop. She came out of it as a double. By the scoring system that would have been a zero on the whole element, a punch in the gut with the silent viciousness that sports alone can justify. The math did the rest and she fell to the 13th.
Her outburst two nights later was of another nature. Glenn went out to the ice in Team USA attire to skate the free, gave her jacket to coach Damon Allen, and walked right to center as the U.S. fans in the arena rejoiced once more. With a music cue, her medley constructed around the two songs of the moment, “I Will Find You” and “The Return”, there was not room to negotiate with the moment. She started with the triple axel and made it land perfectly and the crowd was as excited as though it had been holding its breath since Tuesday. It was not shown as perfection, it was shown as survival, skill and control coming back in the same program. Her words in the Kiss-and-Cry so fell as to the shock of an athlete in a flashback, back to the present: “I am at the Olympics. I didn’t fall. I didn’t fall at the Olympics.”
The figures were equal to the emotion: 147.52 during the free skate to make 214.91, a season’s best score in international competition. She momentarily occupied the seat of the leader as still more skaters were to follow and even without probable route to the podium, the night changed. On NBC, Alysa Liu was clear, it was “Destroyed by her”.
Glenn had come to these Games as an all-American tale: a group of incredibly talented women, Glenn, Liu, and Isabeau Levito, came to Milan with buzz, national titles, and the feeling that the American medal drought in the sport was approaching an end. Glenn had already possessed here a fragment of hardware in the form of a team event, which was designed to resemble a relay among four disciplines, with the points of each skater cumulative into one total. The U.S has prioritized that event over the years and the structure is made to go deep in addition to going star-power, with countries only being allowed to make a limited number of replacements once the opening segments are over.
There are no substitutes in the individual event, however, only the skater, the blade and the math. The experience of Glenn during the week was the case study of that reality, and what it resembles when an athlete discovers the way to continue skating anyway.
