The story of Bradie Tennell’s long and decorated figure skating career has a satirically cartoonish side to it, which is something she wryly acknowledges, no matter that it has hurt like heck at times to be its protagonist.
“I have definitely felt a bit like Eeyore,” Tennell said, recalling the donkey in A.A. Milne’s Pooh stories with a perpetually aggrieved and ironically comedic view of his plight.
“They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them,” Eeyore says in The House at Pooh Corner.
How true that has been for Tennell, 27, who makes her Grand Prix season debut this weekend at Skate Canada in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. For the last five seasons, it has been one thing after another for the two-time U.S. champion and 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist.
Injuries. Boot problems. More injuries. Blade issues. Tennell kept trying to avoid having the other boot drop, because it usually hit her leg. Whether her travails were purely accidental or just the damage elite athletes incidentally do to their bodies and equipment, she had them all while trying to make another Olympic team.
Tennell had been the most consistent U.S. woman over four seasons, winning medals (two gold) at four straight U.S. Championships from 2018 through 2021. She was a good bet to make a second straight Olympic team before chronic right ankle pain made her unable to compete during the 2021-22 Olympic season.
The source of the pain was never diagnosed. The recovery plan: four months off the ice.
She returned to finish second at 2023 nationals, then was sidelined virtually the entire next season (2023-24) by a freak fall on a turn in practice, an accident that led to a spiral oblique fracture of her left ankle, an injury as bad as it sounds. That led to one surgery to stabilize the bones with a plate and five screws, then another to remove the hardware because it painfully interfered with the fit of her boot. The recovery plan? Five months off the ice.
“I was like, ‘Maybe I’m not really meant for this anymore. Maybe it’s a sign from the universe,’’’ she told me in a recent Zoom interview.
“But deep down, there was never really any doubt that I was going to try to come back. After everything I’d gone through in 2022, I kind of made a promise to myself that if there was any chance of me overcoming that whole foot injury saga, I knew that I had to stick it out to the end of this quad (the four years leading to the next Olympics) to really give it my best effort.”
Her resolve would be tested again last season.
Tennell worked her way through last fall’s international season and was headed to the 2025 nationals with renewed optimism when a debilitating case of norovirus hit. Then she hurt her hip. She still finished second in the short program but fourth overall, undone when her lack of stamina led to mistakes on her final three jumping passes.
“That’s sport,” she said. “You take the hits as they happen.”
And, like Eeyore, you think, “The nicest thing about the rain is it always stops. Eventually.”
It stopped long enough for Tennell to lead the U.S. team at the 2025 Four Continents Championships with a silver medal, beating two of the three U.S. skaters who had finished ahead of her at nationals. She followed that by recording season bests at a minor event in Poland.
And then, getting ready to open her 2025-26 season at a Challenger Series event in Japan, she spent nearly half a day at Newark Airport waiting for her flight to leave.
“I think I left my body back in New Jersey,” she said after two underwhelming performances placed her fifth. “I left Japan feeling a bit disappointed but very motivated.”
That showed in two strong skates to win a lesser national-level event a month later in Boston and even more resolve to stay on the oft bumpy road she had traveled in an effort to make the 2026 Olympic team. It has taken her to three new training bases since 2022, first leaving her home in suburban Chicago for Colorado Springs, then moving on to France, and now settling in northern New Jersey.
Her head coach and choreographer, Benoit Richaud, who has done programs for Tennell since 2017, is based in France. Her “assistant” coach, Jeremy Allen, who has helped train her off-and-on for more than 10 years, is in Chicago. Each visits her in New Jersey occasionally, but most of their work is done via the video she sends after practice.
“At first, I was a little hesitant about the idea because of the distance thing,” said Allen, who has been back on Team Tennell since 2023. “But if there’s anyone I can trust with doing a lot of the work on her own, it’s her, because she’s always been just such a hard worker.”
And kept skating even though it has caused her so much pain, both physically and psychologically.
“It becomes your identity a little bit, right?” Allen said. “But first and foremost, the thing that’s really pushed her to keep competing and keep pushing through is that she actually really loves it.”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 24: Bradie Tennell skates in the Ladies Free Skate during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating at Orleans Arena October 24, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Matthew Stockman - International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)
International Skating Union via
Said Tennell: “I really am not doing this for external gratification or validation. I’m doing this wholly for myself because I believe I can.”
Earning one of the three women’s singles spots on the U.S. team for the 2026 Olympics will be a formidable challenge for anyone other than the three skaters who finished first (Alysa Liu), fourth (Isabeau Levito) and fifth (Amber Glenn) at the 2025 World Championships.
“There’s no question in my mind that she is a serious contender,” Allen said.
Given the selection criteria (see p. 17 of linked document), which value results over this season and last, Tennell may wind up needing a convincing victory at the 2026 U.S. Championships to make a strong case for herself.
“No matter who’s competing, no matter what happens, my job at the end of the day remains the same, and it’s to go out there, and it’s to skate the best programs that I possibly can, and the rest of it is out of my hands.” Tennell said.
“Do I want to be on the team? Absolutely.”
That is why her free skate music, to the film score from The Mission, has special resonance for Tennell, both in defining her purpose and, to a degree, bookending her career as a senior skater.
She has thought about this season being her last as a competitor. She has also wondered if this could be a successful season if she doesn’t make the Olympic team. She has wisely deferred answering either question while still in the thick of it all.
Her future will likely include coaching, which she already does, and work as a strength and conditioning specialist, for which she needs three more years of undergraduate work in kinesiology before she can study for an advanced certificate.
Tennell first used music from The Mission in the 2016-17 season, when she was 16, battling chronic back problems. She finished ninth at 2017 nationals and wasn’t on anybody’s list – even of longshots – for the 2018 Olympic team, until a third-place finish at her senior Grand Prix debut the following season in November 2017.
A stunning win at the subsequent 2018 U.S. Championships propelled her onto the Olympic team. She would score a personal best while skating the short program in the Olympic team event, and her ninth place in singles was best for the U.S. women.
Bradie Tennell, foreground, poses after winning the women’s free skate event with second place finisher Mirai Nagasu, left, third place finisher Karen Chen, second from right, and fourth place finisher Ashley Wagner at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar)
AP
Over the next eight seasons, Tennell often wanted to skate another program to different music from The Mission, a complicated and bloody story about colonialism and religion and treatment of indigenous peoples made into a 1986 film notable for Ennio Morricone’s Academy Award-nominated score. Tennell knew this was the time to go back to the music, and not only because it seems likely this will be her final competitive season.
“I felt like I could draw parallels from that story (in the movie) and kind of fit it to my journey the past four years,” Tennell said. “When I missed the team in 2022, you know, it was a death, it was the death of that dream. It took me a really, really long time to kind of make my peace with it.
“I’m not telling the story of the movie. I’m telling the story of my mission and my journey. I’ve been on a mission the past four years to achieve that end goal of making it back on the Olympic team.”
Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at every Winter Olympics since 1980, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.
