Amber Glenn capped her breakout 2024 by earning the biggest title for a U.S. women’s singles figure skater since 2010.
Glenn, 25, won the Grand Prix Final, the most exclusive event in figure skating, over the rest of the world’s top-ranked women (all five from Japan).
Fellow Americans Ilia Malinin and ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates later repeated as Grand Prix Final champions. The U.S. won three of the four Grand Prix Final titles for the first time.
Grand Prix Final highlights air Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
GRAND PRIX FINAL: Full Results
Glenn had the highest score in Friday’s short program and Saturday’s free skate, landing a triple Axel on both days. Glenn tallied 212.07 total points, prevailing by 3.22 over 19-year-old Mone Chiba.
Glenn made two minor jumping mistakes in Saturday’s free (doubling a planned triple Salchow and two-footing the landing of a triple flip). As she came off the ice, she told coach Damon Allen that her back hurt. On Friday, she felt she pinched a rib in the short program.
“I have not felt my best being here,” Glenn said later Saturday. “So, unfortunately, it wasn’t a skate to where I was so excited — oh my gosh, smiling. I was there to do a job, and I did that to the best of my ability. I would not say it was quite a performance, more of a demonstration of skill.”
Three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto was third, her first defeat in top-level competition since the 2022 Grand Prix Final.
Glenn became the first American woman since Alissa Czisny in 2010 to win the Grand Prix Final, the sport’s third-most prestigious event after the Olympics and World Championships. The last American woman to win worlds was Kimmie Meissner in 2006. The last to win the Olympics was Sarah Hughes in 2002.
Glenn also became the third U.S. woman to win two Grand Prix regular season events plus the Final in one season after Michelle Kwan (1995-96, the first Grand Prix season) and Sasha Cohen (2002-03).
Glenn has won all four of her competitions this season — the first four international victories of her career on any level. She is the oldest woman to win the Grand Prix Final since Russian Irina Slutskaya in 2004.
“I’m exhausted,” she said in a rinkside interview shortly after the free skate. “It has been a whirlwind of a season. I kind of struggled with this imposter syndrome. Oh, no, no, I’m not winning, that’s not me. I’m just happy my hard work is finally showing.”
Glenn’s improvement can be attributed partly to neurotherapy over the offseason.
And to increased consistency with her trademark element, the triple Axel, the hardest jump being done in senior women’s international events so far this season. Glenn is the only woman to land a clean triple this senior Grand Prix season, and she has done so at all of her competitions overall.
Recently, she has been told the words “calm beast” before skating.
“One of the coaches at my (Colorado Springs) rink told me, when I was skating really well one day, that I looked like a calm beast,” Glenn said. “So being calm and not rushing everything, but also having that power.”
Glenn began 2024 by winning her first senior U.S. title in her ninth try. That marked her second victory since winning the 2014 U.S. junior title (the other a regional qualifier in 2018).
She was second at the 2021 U.S. Championships, putting her in contention to make the three-woman Olympic team in 2022.
But she placed 14th in the short program at the 2022 U.S. Championships, then learned she had COVD-19 and withdrew before the free skate. That was one of a string of obstacles for Glenn, who also dealt with concussions in 2020 and 2023.
Come 2026, she can become the oldest U.S. Olympic women’s singles skater in 98 years.
Before that, she will defend her national title in late January in Wichita, Kansas. After nationals, three women will be named to the team for March’s world championships. At last March’s worlds, Glenn placed 10th with errors on her last four jumping passes in her free skate.
Later Saturday, Malinin became the second American men’s singles skater to win multiple Grand Prix Finals after 2022 Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen.
He became the first skater to land all six types of quadruple jumps in one program: Axel, flip, Lutz, loop, Salchow and toe loop, though it was not a clean skate. He fell on one of his two quad Lutz attempts and had two of his landed quads judged as under-rotated. All seven jumping passes received negative grades of execution.
Runner-up Yuma Kagiyama outscored Malinin in the free skate.
“I had this idea and this goal that I wanted to achieve here, and I was able to blow it out of the park,” Malinin said. He added later, “My main goal was to just try this new element layout just to see how I can manage it for the future competitions.”
Malinin, who turned 20 last Monday, has won all seven of his competitions over the last year.
Chock and Bates became the first repeat Grand Prix Final ice dance champions since Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje in 2015.
They posted the highest total score this season — 219.85 — and prevailed by 13.74 points over Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri. That’s the second-largest margin of victory in a Grand Prix Final ice dance under a 21-year-old scoring system after the first of Weaver and Poje’s titles in 2014.
Chock and Bates won their sixth Grand Prix Final medal overall — the first came in 2014 — to tie the ice dance record. Olympic ice dance gold medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir and Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat also won six Grand Prix Final medals.
Chock and Bates have won 10 of their 11 competitions since the start of 2023, including two world titles.
