‘It Was Soul Crushing.’ Amber Glenn Opens Up About Her Disappointing Olympic Short Program

Amber Glenn, who is making her Olympic debut at the Milano Cortina Games, is fighting to preserve the joy of her experience.

A fierce advocate of mental health and LGBTQ rights, Glenn was only one of two skaters to land a triple axel in the women’s short program on Feb. 17. Normally that would be enough to put her within shouting distance of a medal. (The other skater to land one, Japan’s Ami Nakai, leads the women going into the final.) Skating to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” Glenn then performed her triple jump-triple jump combination. 

But during her flying sit spin, she said after practice the following day, she “tapped down on my spin, which I never do.” That put her off balance. “My core wasn’t stable, and I was a little bit noodle-y,” she said. Entering her triple loop jump, she was forced to pop it and completed only two revolutions.

“I have always been known to wear my heart on my sleeve, which is what makes me relatable, but it also makes it hard for me to hide how I feel. And in that moment, it was soul crushing. Because I did the hard stuff and it was the easiest thing, my favorite jump, that just got away from me.”

In the short program, such a mistake is costly. Skaters in the women’s event are required to execute a set number of elements, or skills, and a triple jump is one of them. By performing only a double, Glenn received no points for that skill. “It’s gone. You can’t go back in time,” said Glenn, who ended up finishing 13th. “You can’t fix it. I didn’t get to skate off like I see in other sports, where you make a mistake and you’re done and you just kind of [go] off into the woods. I wish I could do that. But they expect you to smile, and they expect you to still perform, like you’re having the time of your life, when in reality your dreams were just smashed to pieces.”

Not allowing past mistakes to affect the rest of her program is something Glenn has been working on, her coach, Damon Allen, told TIME before the Olympics. When he started coaching her, if the beginning of Glenn's program didn't go well, she wouldn’t be able to recover and the remaining elements would suffer too.

“I didn’t have any jumps after so it wasn’t the most difficult thing to get through,” said Glenn of continuing with the short program after missing the triple jump. “I fought for all the levels that I could” to earn as many points as possible for her choreography, spins, and step sequence. “In the team event, I messed up in the beginning and then was able to push through to the end. So that was definitely a testament to my growth over the years.”

When Glenn came off the ice, teammate Alysa Liu was there to provide support. This U.S. women’s squad–of Glenn; Liu, who finished third; and Isabeau Levito, who finished eighth–have been making just as many headlines for their unusually close friendship as for their skating accomplishments. Calling themselves the Blade Angels, the trio have bonded over a shared desire to break the mold of the rigid, controlling environment that has characterized elite skating for decades, in which young girls in particular are scrutinized for their body shape and subjected to strict diets with little to no say in most decisions regarding their career. 

“I didn’t see Isabeau until much later in the dining hall, but Alysa was right there for me, giving me a big hug and comforting me,” says Glenn. “I was telling her, ‘You go, enjoy, congrats, enjoy this, please, like go. You did great.’ I was wanting her to enjoy herself rather than trying to comfort me. But she couldn’t care less. It was another day for her, and I think that’s what makes her attitude toward the sport so incredible. She’s able to see it as not—of course there’s pressure, but [for her] it’s pure enjoyment.” All three women advanced to the Feb. 19 free skating final.

Glenn has won three national championships in a row, but the Winter Games are by far the biggest stage she’s competed on. “I did all I could do to prepare for this, but nothing can prepare you for an Olympics unless you’ve done an Olympics,” she said. “I have made tremendous progress. I have never even thought that I’d be where I am today. So I have to reflect and remind myself of that.”

The mistake on the jump wasn’t due to nerves, she explained, but simply being off balance. And her emotional reaction wasn’t to the realization that she had lost her chance for a medal. “I was devastated because I lost the happiness and the enjoyment that I wanted to have out there on the ice to say, ‘I fought for everything, I did everything I could.’ That’s what I truly wanted, and that’s what I missed out on. So that’s what I’m hoping to do tomorrow. When I was little, I always imagined me doing a spiral and looking up and being like, ‘I’m at the Olympics.’ That’s what I want.”