Amber Glenn leads the Grand Prix Final after the short program as she eyes the biggest title for a U.S. women’s singles figure skater since 2010.
The U.S. champion Glenn landed a clean triple Axel on Thursday in Grenoble, France. She is the only woman to land a clean triple Axel on the senior Grand Prix Series this fall and has done so at all four of her events this season overall.
Moments after her opening Axel, Glenn stumbled on the ice and said she “kind of pinched a rib or something.” She then two-footed the landing of both the back end of a triple flip-triple toe loop combination and a triple loop that lacked height.
Coming off the ice, Glenn put her hand on her lower back, leaned over and winced in telling coach Damon Allen what happened.
GRAND PRIX FINAL: Broadcast Schedule | Results
“Rough. Very rough,” she said, according to U.S. Figure Skating. “I felt very tense, especially after the triple Axel. I almost fell on my face, so that freaked me out a lot mentally. … I’m not hurt. I’m OK. It’s a little achy, and it freaked me out, so I held back on the next two jumps. They were not close to being my best, but I fought through it mentally to stay on my feet.”
Her total score — 70.04 — was the lowest of her four short programs this season. It was still enough to take the lead by 71 hundredths of a point over Mone Chiba of Japan going into Saturday’s free skate, live on Peacock.
All six women in the field — five from Japan, plus Glenn — counted at least one negatively graded element Thursday. They were all outscored by junior women’s short program leader Mao Shimada of Japan, who will not be old enough for senior events until the 2026-27 season.
Three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto skated last and fell on her third and final jumping pass, placing fourth. Sakamoto last lost a top-level competition at the 2022 Grand Prix Final.
“Ever since I arrived in France my condition has not been good, and I made mistakes,” she said, according to the International Skating Union. “Actually during all the last three weeks my condition has not been good. I really want to put today’s performance behind me and change my mind for tomorrow.”
Glenn is bidding to become the first U.S. woman to win the Grand Prix Final since Alissa Czisny in 2010. No American woman has won the other two major titles — Olympics or world championships — since 2006.
Glenn, 25, began 2024 with one career senior-level title at the 2018 U.S. Midwest Sectionals. Then in January, she won the senior U.S. Championships for the first time in her ninth appearance. This fall, she has so far won all three of her competitions, the first international titles of her career at any level.
She qualified second into the Grand Prix Final, the most exclusive competition in the sport. The Final takes the top six women overall from the fall Grand Prix Series and is often a preview of the following March’s World Championships.
The Grand Prix Final continues Friday with the rhythm dance, pairs’ free skate and men’s short program, all live on Peacock.
Earlier Thursday, Germans Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin topped the pairs’ short, edging Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara by 45 hundredths of a point.
Hase and Volodin scored a personal-best 76.72 points despite Hase cutting her leg with her skate blade on a throw jump in warm-up.
“It was just like a little scratch, but there was a lot of bleeding,” she said, according to the ISU. “So we just fixed that. Everything was fine, no big problem, but it was just maybe a good thing to concentrate on something else.”
Hase and Volodin are trying to become the first pair to repeat as Grand Prix Final champions since fellow Germans Aljona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy in 2011.
U.S. champions Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea are fifth out of six pairs after a near fall on a throw triple loop. They are the fourth U.S. pair to compete in the Grand Prix Final over the last 15 editions.
“I feel pretty good about today’s performance,” O’Shea said, according to the ISU. “It was an OK program. There’s some levels we’re happy that we got, some we are confused. ... The throw was perfect in the warm-up, but during the program we missed our timing a bit, but overall I think we’ve performed really well.”
The field is without reigning world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps of Canada. Their withdrawal was announced Monday due to Deschamps’ illness.
