Amber Glenn’s ‘Like a Prayer’ skating routine ‘is a celebration of the queer community’
Amber Glenn is poised to make her first USA Olympics team in figure skating, after barely missing out in 2022. The post Amber Glenn’s ‘Like a Prayer’ skating routine ‘is a celebration of the queer community’ appeared first on Outsports.
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Amber Glenn nears the threshold of her Olympic dream as a medal favorite even before qualifying for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games.
The back-to-back U.S. champion is poised to become the first American woman to win three consecutive national titles since Michelle Kwan completed her run of eight straight titles in 2005.
Medals and awards litter Glenn’s home in Colorado, but all of the accomplishments she has made on the ice feel like they represent a larger mission that lies in Glenn’s heart.
All of that and more make Amber Glenn one of this year’s Top 10 honorees on the Outsports Power 100.
Glenn came out as bisexual and pansexual six years ago thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal only to watch it become a massive one in an extremely positive way. The response from fans celebrating her became ever-present, and Glenn credits the decision with giving her a sense of freedom that led to the performances that cemented her as a top name in international figure skating.
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“I’ve always been physically capable. That was never a question,” Glenn told Outsports. “It was always a mental and competence problem. It was internal battles for so long: when to lean into my strengths and when to work on my weaknesses, when to finally let myself portray the way I am off the ice on the ice. That really started when I came out publicly.
“I had been talking about my mental health briefly, not too much in the media because I wasn’t at the top six years ago. I was fifth or sixth in the nation, I would get interviews every once in a while, but I knew I could do better. I felt like there was something missing, like I was trying to be something I wasn’t. I got to a point where I wasn’t getting satisfaction from my accomplishments. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything but just skating.”
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Glenn credits retired skater Karina Manta coming out and spending time with nonbinary skater Timothy Leduc while training in Texas, as catalysts for her coming out and becoming more ingrained in the LGBTQ community, but it also fueled a new desire to be the person that they represented to her to others..
“If she had that kind of impact on me, maybe I’ll have that impact on others. Pretty instantly, I felt a change. I felt that weight, that block, slowly pull away,” Glenn said. “I saw Timothy go through this self-discovery and I got to attend events with a queer community in Dallas, which was incredible.
“I got to see the work they were doing, and anytime I felt like I was trying to figure something out with myself, I could go to them. They were very encouraging of me going down a path of my own choosing, and I want to give the community what they gave to me ”
Glenn has championed LGBTQ inclusion in sports since coming out, and the community has been with her every step of her journey. That’s probably best evidenced by the continued relationship she has with the fans that gave her the Progress Pride flag she held high after winning her first national championship in 2024.
Those same fans were present at her 2025 win and she got to spend time with them afterward in the appropriately named Boitano’s Lounge.
That commitment extends beyond just the sports in which she competes, though, and it is potentially more important now than ever given the recent decision by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to ban trans athletes from female sports and a similar decision potentially coming from the International Olympic Committee.
“It’s so disheartening,” Glenn said. “I don’t understand why we can’t just let people do what they love. I understand that we want to let people succeed, but a medal is just a medal. Half of the ones I get today are just plastic. We do these things because we love them.
“I really want to make it to where young adults and children can enjoy sports and have it be a safe space for them. I want to help any way I can to push that forward. Right now, we may only be able to take baby steps, but every step counts.”
That extends to the socioeconomic barriers present for those that want to participate in “exclusive sports” such as figure skating. Glenn is quick to point out that she doubts her parents would have let her pursue figure skating if they had known the financial cost.
“We got used blades, used boots. My mom either made my costumes or got them off eBay. My coach only charged a certain amount because they saw the talent I had. My dad worked so much to put me through this,” Glenn said. “We did everything we could and it was still so expensive.
“I want there to be more inclusion and diversity in the sport. It’s getting better, but there is kind of this idea that there is only one path in order to succeed. That’s not always the case. There are so many ways that you can succeed in a sport like figure skating, but we still need to work to make it more accessible.”
Part of that push is continuing to represent the queer community on the icy stage she has and making the conscious choice to incorporate the cultural influence of that community into what she does. Her current short program routine is set to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” a song that has been adopted as a queer anthem, and her exhibition performances have featured music from queer artists ranging from Lady Gaga to Chappell Roan to Billie Eilish to Mary Lambert.
With her “Like a Prayer” routine specifically, Glenn and out ice dancer and choreographer Kaitlyn Weaver collaborated to make something that “conveyed a message.”
“We want it to be a celebration of our community. It can interpret it however you want it to be, but you can’t take away that it is a celebration of the queer community,” Glenn said. “Kaitlyn brought it to me and I heard it and I was like, ‘That’s from ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ I don’t want to think about that.’ But it fit so well. I’m a comic book superhero fan, but when I skate to it now I don’t even think about that. It starts so magical and powerful, and at the end I’m able to have fun and let loose and it lets the crowd get involved.
“I’ve always enjoyed feeling like I’m embodying that character or person. When I was a kid, I would turn whatever I was listening to and give a concert to the onlookers who were watching me skate in the mall where I skated. I’d turn on Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ and I’d be that person: little nine-year-old me being like ‘I am Lady Gaga’ to these teenage mallwalkers just hanging out.”
Now, that little 9-year-old who thought she was Lady Gaga, who thought she would retire at 18 and nearly retired after being an alternate at the Beijing Games, is on the cusp of an Olympic dream she has held since childhood. But, like everything, Glenn’s shot at the Olympics is about much more than individual glory.
“I thought [Beijing] was as good as I was going to get, and I’ve gone miles past that since then,” she said. “Thinking about Italy, I get really excited, especially after doing ‘Stars On Ice’ and getting to know and get close with the other members of the world team. Thinking about getting to experience that with them, chasing that same dream together, that would be out of this world. It’s something I get a lot of fulfillment from.
“For me, it gives me even more of a voice. It is the biggest stage that I can ask for as an athlete for people to ask me certain questions and being able to extend my message to people around the world. That’s all I can ask for as someone who wants to push the sport forward and advocate for mental health and the queer community. That is something I hope I can do not just for myself but for the community.”
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The post Amber Glenn’s ‘Like a Prayer’ skating routine ‘is a celebration of the queer community’ appeared first on Outsports.
