Meet Bradie Tennell, US Figure Skating's Steely Star on a Meteoric Rise
Editor's Note: Tennell's breakout continued in Pyeongchang as she finished fifth in the ladies short program in the team event on Day 3, helping Team USA unexpectedly advance to the finals.
This Winter Olympics, Bradie Tennell, the greatest hope in U.S. women's figure skating, is not the typical American star. She's had minimal top-level competition and media exposure. That's mainly because serious back injuries kept her out of the spotlight for two years.
So don't feel out of the loop if your only response to all that information is "Who?"
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Tennell has not yet made the cultural impact of those who came before her, like Dorothy Hamill and her trendsetting wedge haircut, Tara Lipkinski, who created buzz with her precocious charisma, or Kristi Yamaguchi, who gained global fame long before she was a "Dancing With the Stars'' champion.
Tennell is a wispy 20-year-old who stunned the skating world in January by winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championships with almost casual ease. It was a brilliant and wobble-free performance after she persevered through injuries, purely due to a love for gliding across ice. It is an infatuation that began at the age of two-and-a-half, and it mystified her mother.
"She came home from work one day and I just started bugging her to take me ice skating," Tennell says. "I don't even know how I figured out what skating was," she says.
But she knew she loved it, and even though Tennell is shy and soft-spoken, that passion for skating resonates when she talks about her sport.
"I hate getting up at four o'clock in the morning on freezing cold winter days (to practice), but I love just being able to go out on the ice and just skate. I love to feel the wind in my face. I love how powerful I feel when I jump—just skating in general. I love the sport so much."
It's a refreshing take from someone whose craft is notorious for overbearing parents and strict judges who punish every glitch and turn youngsters into ragged bundles of nerves. With Tennell, there's a flowing harmony with the ice that shows when she skates. There's no tension in her face when she approaches a tough jump, and her look of serenity lasts throughout the entire program.
Tennell takes pride in looking back to her earliest days of skating and remembering that, "Even when I fell, I never cried." And in her early days she fell often.
"She was never the best," nor even close to it, her mother Jeannie says flatly. "At five years old, this kid couldn't jump on two feet."
Which didn't come as a surprise, given that Bradie had coordination problems from the moment she started to walk as a toddler.
"When she ran, she would always trip over one of her feet," Jeannie sayd. "Anytime she would take off running, she would trip. She could walk straight, but she couldn't run."
Jeannie's career as a registered nurse helped her identify that her daughter's feet were overpronating, and Bradie was fitted for orthotic inserts in her shoes.
When she started skating, Jeannie says, "She took it upon herself to put those tiny orthotics from her shoes to her skates. Her big thing was that she knew she had to wear those orthotics so that she could wear high heels when she got older."
Tennell stands 5'6", but from a distance, her long arms and legginess could fool some into thinking she's a 6-footer. She was 13 with hair to her calves when she finally agreed to cut it for the first time, and it speaks to her good heart that that's also when she began the practice of donating the excess to wig-making charities.
Tennell was homeschooled, completed high school online and after the Olympics, she plans to complete her general education at a community college.
She dominated the U.S. Chapmionships with two faultless programs, and on the night of her free skate, she added a quick 6,000 Instagram followers as her feather-soft landings on ice sent her popularity soaring.
Tennell first displayed Olympic potential when she captured gold in the junior division of the 2015 U.S. Championships. It was an enviable accomplishment but no guarantee for success at the senior level, and the afterglow quickly extinguished. In May 2015, she was diagnosed with stress fractures in her lower back. In 2016, the same injury hit again.
That meant sweating out consecutive summers immobilized and cinched up in a back brace.
"For three months, each time," Tennell says. "It was in the middle of summer, so it was very hot. I had never been off the ice for that long. It was terrible."
Tennell was understandably morose, and she initially ignored an exercise regimen aimed at strengthening her core, which was crucial to full recovery. That led to some firm realism from her mother.
As the healing process dragged on, Jeannie says, "She and I had many tears over it. And I thought in my head, This could be it. I would never say that to her. The only time I would kind of say those words was when it was hard to get her to do the kind of exercises she had to do. It was, ‘If these can't be done, we need to think along other lines.' I wasn't going to stop her, but you have to put it on the table."
It helped that Jeannie also had been a personal trainer before becoming a nurse. She says her philosophy was, "One step at a time. Let's get you healed. Let's make sure everything lines up. Then we start working on the next step. That's the way we approached it. I wouldn't let her deviate from it."
Jeannie is a single parent of three who has had to stretch the family budget to pay for skating lessons.
"I never made her skate at all," says Jeannie. "I said, 'As long as you progress, I'll figure out a way to afford your lessons and let it keep going.'"
"She's my biggest supporter," says Tennell. "I would not be where I am without her."
Together, they returned Tennell to a pain-free state that allowed her to toss the back brace into the attic of their home in Carpentersville, Illinois, a city with a population of about 40,000. She limits her spine-bending layback spins to two per day now, but otherwise she's back to normal.
But no one knew just how much Tennell had recovered until last November, when she made her debut on the ISU Grand Prix circuit, the major leagues of skating. At the Skate America event in Lake Placid, New York, Tennell placed third, the only U.S. woman to medal. It was the first time since since 2007 that an American woman medaled in her Grand Prix debut.
Tennell's rapid ascent has earned comparisons to Lipinski, whose Olympic title at 15 shocked the world. But Lipinski, now an NBC Olympic commentator, points out she had been a world champion the year before, and says Tennell's rise is even more meteoric.
"Two months ago, no one really knew about Bradie," Lipinski told Bleacher Report at January's U.S. Championships. "Now, all eyes are on her when she's practicing. You've got to feel that pressure."
Lipinski remembers when that pressure nearly defeated her the day of her free skate at the 1998 Olympics:
"I was like, 'Mom, you've got to call them. I can't do this.' I remember feeling that pressure and trying to live up to it. But it's like nothing fazes Bradie. I watched her all week. She never misses a jump. Mentally, she has the blinders on, and as a competitor, that's very difficult to do."
Consistency and composure have became Tennell's trademarks and are no surprise to her coach, Denise Myers, who "absolutely'' expects to see more improvement before the Olympics. "She hasn't really reached her peak yet, and she's never complacent,'' Myers says.
Tennell might not like standing before cameras and microphones, but on the ice, she has oozed poise and precision.
"I take a lot of pride in my consistency," Tennell says. "I've never been a nervous competitor. I've always enjoyed competing, (and feeling) the energy in the arena."
At the U.S. Championships, she was nearly flawless while executing a combined total of nine triple jumps in her short and long programs.
She's glad she'll be out of the country by the time NBC's Olympic promos hit full stride.
"I've kind of stayed away from all of that because I didn't want to put pressure on myself," she says, adding that interviews are "not my strong suit, but I love a challenge."
As for what she wants America to know about its newest skating star, she says, "I don't know. I'm just me. I'm just a ... girl that loves skating."
But she'll have to grow up in a hurry competitively. She'll march at the opening ceremony on Feb. 9, then compete on Feb. 20 and 22. Tennell may also compete in the team event, either performing in the ladies short program on Feb. 11 or the free skate on Feb. 12. Selections don't have to be made until the day before the competition.
U.S. individual women won at least one figure skating medal at 11 consecutive Olympics from 1968-2006, but they have been shut out at the last two games. At Pyeongchang, the skaters from Russia are expected to dominate and possibly sweep the medals.
"They're very powerful skaters and there's a certain part of me that looks up to them," Tennell says. "But there's also a competitive side of me that says, 'Oh, no, I have to beat them.'"
That would be a major upset, but it wouldn't be the first time Tennell has overcome long odds.
Tom Weir covered eight Winter Olympics as a columnist for USA Today.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
