GREENVILLE, South Carolina — Before the Stars on Ice tour, Amber Glenn commissioned a friend to draw the Blade Angels — Glenn, Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito — as The Powerpuff Girls.
Then Glenn ordered a few hundred stickers to give out sporadically on the tour — which began the first week of April in Japan, then started its six-week U.S. stint last week in Florida (full schedule here).
“You’ve got to be at one of the stops, probably at one of the meet and greets,” to get a sticker, Glenn said before Tuesday night’s show in Greenville.
The stickers are already popular among the figure skaters, who are currently traveling up the East Coast on sleeper buses.
“Everyone on tour has put them on their phone, on their iPad, something like that, just as a cute little thing,” Glenn said.
Glenn, who won the last three U.S. titles and in her Olympic debut won team event gold and placed fifth individually in Milan, is relishing her second spring doing the tour.
That’s in no small part due to the Blade Angels reunion.
Glenn and Levito were both at March’s World Championships in Prague (Levito placed fourth, Glenn sixth). But Liu couldn’t defend her world title from 2025 due a whirlwind of opportunities that came with becoming the first U.S. woman to win Olympic singles gold since 2002.
“They’re two of my closest friends,” Glenn said, “and being able to do this (tour) together has been a dream.”
The tour includes every member of the U.S. team event roster that took gold in February: Liu, Glenn, Ilia Malinin, the pairs’ team of Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea and ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Plus more Olympians.
Chock, 33, and Bates, 37, tour members since 2016, described their role toward the rest of the skaters as “fun aunt and uncle to the kids.” Bates actually debuted in Stars on Ice in 2010 with former partner Emily Samuelson.
Ilia Malinin arrived on tour fresh off a third consecutive world title. As part of the Stars show, he skates to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”
“It kind of reflects what happened at the Olympics,” he said (Malinin led after the short program in Milan, then placed 15th in the free skate to finish eighth overall, snapping a 14-event win streak). “It’s really just a way to show that I kind of overcame what happened there and now that I’m a completely different person.”
Last week, Malinin met Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who rebounded from missing the medals in 2022 to win slalom gold in 2026.
He remembered what she told him.
“Sometimes there are things we can’t control in life, and that you really just have to let things fall naturally,” Malinin said. “Just be there for the road. Be able to adapt and evolve. Just take everything into consideration.”
Liu and Malinin are both eager to keep skating as a new Olympic cycle begins in earnest this fall.
Asked what she’s looking forward to in the offseason, Liu said, “brainstorm new programs.”
“I want to get back into training, like I already feel weaker,” from a lack of practice since Milan, she said (interview video atop this post). “I want to feel strong again. I think that’s why I like being an athlete.”
Others plan to determine after the tour whether they will continue to compete.
“I have not decided as of now, so it’s not a definite no or definite yes at this moment,” said 2014 and 2022 Olympian Jason Brown, who did not make the 2026 team after placing eighth at the Prevagen U.S. Championships in January.
“Nationals was a really rough event for me, to say the least, to put it very lightly,” he said. “So it’s hard for me to think of nationals as being my final event. That said, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Bates said that for he and Chock, a married couple since 2024, “it would come down to how heavy the pull is that would bring us back to competitive ice.”
They competed at the last four Olympics together and won three consecutive world titles from 2023-25. In Milan, they earned their first Olympic medal outside of the team event — silver behind Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France.
“To be at that level, it’s more than just a full-time job, it’s a lifestyle, it’s 100% full commitment,” Bates said. “Every decision you make is in service of that pursuit of being the best in the world. We’ve chased that dream for many, many years. I think we are giving ourselves the break that we’ve earned. We’ll see, but for right now, we’re just really enjoying the tour and just not worried too much about anything in the future.”
The fact that Glenn is on this tour is a testament to her breakout over the last two years. Going into 2024, she had one career senior-level win — the 2019 Midwestern Sectionals, a qualifying competition for nationals.
In addition to U.S. titles in 2024, 2025 and 2026, she went undefeated in the fall 2024 Grand Prix season and won that December’s Grand Prix Final -- at the time the most prestigious title for a U.S. women’s singles skater in 14 years.
Glenn reflected while working out with other tour skaters on Monday.
“I realized, oh my gosh, when I was like 19, I was thinking, oh, you know, pretty soon I’m probably going to stop skating and either be like a Pilates teacher or a spin cycle instructor or something, because I loved being active,” said Glenn, now 26. “I thought that’s my next step. I never would have guessed that I’d stick with this and make it to the Olympics. That just goes to show you never know. Don’t give up on your dreams. Who knows, maybe I will still be some type of fitness instructor in the future.”
Before that, she must decide whether more competitive skating is in her near future.
“It is definitely something that is in my brain, but it’s hard to make the decision when it still feels like I’m in last season because I’m still doing programs all the time,” she said of the tour. “So as of right now, it’s a decision I will make in the summer, but I definitely don’t think I’m done with figure skating.”
Why not?
“I love it so much,” she said. “As long as my body keeps going and is healthy, mentally and physically, I don’t want to stop.”
