Bradie Tennell

Bradie Tennell (born January 31, 1998) is an American figure skater.

Bradie Tennell was born on January 31, 1998, in Winfield, Illinois.

Her mother, Jean Tennell, was a registered nurse and single mother.

Her two younger brothers were hockey players.

In 2010, at the age of 12, she came in first place at the Upper Great Lakes Regionals, which qualified her to compete as a juvenile at the 2010 U.S. Junior Nationals, where she came in 10th place.

Her goals for the following season was to perfect her double axel and return to junior Nationals.

In 2011, she came in third place in the intermediate division at the Upper Great Lakes Regionals and 15th place at the U.S. Junior Championships, again as an intermediate.

In 2012, as a novice, she came in third place at both the Midwestern Sectionals and the 2012 Upper Great Lakes Regionals.

She competed, also as a novice, at the 2012 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California, where she came in tenth place overall, after earning 32.60 points and coming in tenth place in her short program and 68.78 points in her free skate.

Tennell came in second place overall as a novice at the 2013 Midwestern Sectionals, coming in first place after the short program with 46.05 points and coming in fourth place after the free skate with 72.95 points.

She won the gold medal at the Upper Great Lakes Regionals, also as a novice.

She won the bronze medal, her first "notable medal", at the 2013 U.S. Nationals, again in the novice division, even though she had only two triples in her free skate, which was set to music from The Nutcracker.

She opened her program with a triple Salchow but fell while attempting a triple toe loop.

She successfully executed three triple jumps, coming in fourth place in the free skate and earning 116.91 points overall.

Tennell came in second place at the 2014 Midwestern Sectionals as a junior.

She came in fourth place at the 2014 U.S. Nationals and second place at the Gardena Spring Trophy, again as a junior.

Tennell began the 2014–2015 season by competing at the Nagoya TV Cup in Japan; she came in eighth place, coming in fourth place in the short program, eighth place in the free skate, and earning 144.89 points overall.

She spent the 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 seasons recovering from a back injury but came back in 2017, winning the gold medal at the 2018 U.S. Nationals and competing at the 2018 Olympics.

She also came in second place at the 2015 Midwestern Sectionals.

At the 2015 U.S. Championships, in what NBC Sports called her "breakout moment", and in what Jeré Longman from The New York Times called a "career advancement", she won the gold medal as a junior "by blowing away the field" with a "near-perfect" free skate, earning 16 points more than the second-place finisher.

Tennell later said that although she was well-trained, she went into the competition not expecting to win.

Three months after Nationals, Tennell fractured both wings of a lumbar vertebra and had to spend the summer of 2015 in a back brace.

Tennell began the 2015–2016 season by coming in 11th place at the Junior Grand Prix Cup of Austria; she came in ninth place in the short program and 13th place in the free skate, earning a total of 124.54 points.

Tennell won her first competition at age ten as a juvenile and rose up the ranks, becoming a senior-level skater in November 2016.

She is a 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist, the 2020 Four Continents bronze medalist, the 2018 CS Autumn Classic champion, the 2018 CS Golden Spin of Zagreb champion, and a two-time U.S. national champion (2018, 2021).

Tennell began skating when she was two years old, even though she learned to walk late and had to wear orthotics in her shoes to correct a pronation problem in her feet.

Her first rink was in Crystal Lake, Illinois.

When Tennell was 16, her parents had a "bitter divorce"; as of 2018, her father was not in her or her siblings' lives.

Tennell, her mother, and her brothers lived in a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment; her mother worked overnight shifts at two hospitals.

In 2018, Bradie Tennell described to a reporter the financial hardships her family went through to support her skating career.

Tennell began skating when she was two years old, when she would greet her mother when she returned home after an overnight shift and beg her to take her to the ice rink.

Tennell's first rink was in Crystal Lake, Illinois, not far from her home in Carpentersville, Illinois.

Tennell and her brothers were home-schooled and took online courses.

When Tennell was seven years old, she drew a picture of herself atop an Olympic podium, flanked by her role models Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi.

When Tennell was ten, she began working with Denise Myers.

Tennell skated most of her life at a rink in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, where she also gave lessons to young skaters before beginning her own training, even after competing nationally.

In 2018, she was taking courses at a local community college, to prepare for a possible career in the health field.

Tennell won her first competition when she was ten years old.

She also considered her win at Nationals the first step to competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics; as Philip Hersh stated, "Both the 2012 junior champion, Gracie Gold, and the 2013 junior champion, Polina Edmunds, had made the 2014 U.S. Olympic team, so a similar progression for Tennell seemed realistic".

She began working with coach Denise Myers when she was nine, up until August 2020.