Texas native Amber Glenn wins biggest US women's figure skating title in 14 years, beating Japan's stars

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America's 14-year drought of women's figure skating Grand Prix champions ended Saturday when Amber Glenn overcame elite Japanese opponents to take first place. 

Glenn won the first women's singles final gold medal for the U.S. since 2010. 

She held off Japan's Mone Chiba, Hana Yoshida, Kaori Sakamoto, Rino Matsuike and Wakaba Higuchi, who finished second through sixth in that order. Glenn's victory came by a margin of just 0.69 points over Chiba. 

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At 25, the Texan is the oldest Grand Prix Final winner since Russia’s Irina Slutskaya won her fourth and final title in December 2004 at 26. It sets Glenn up as a top contender at the world championships in Boston March 23-30, less than a year out from the 2026 Olympics.

There was a time in Glenn's career when it appeared she would achieve a feat like this much sooner. In 2014, she won the U.S. junior championships. But she stepped away from skating in 2015 over issues with depression. 

She returned later that year but had one of the worst performances of her career with a sixth-place finish at the 2015 Autumn Classic International. She has since called the experience "a disaster," according to The Washington Post. 

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She took another leave from the sport after that and has since revealed that, during that time, she was told by doctors to leave the sport "indefinitely." But she returned to training in early 2016. Glenn never quite lived up to her 2014 junior championship form in senior level competitions after that. 

In December 2019, Glenn announced she was pansexual,