You might say Amber Glenn channeled two pop culture icons with her figure skating gala performance on Saturday, February 21: Lady Gaga and Johnny Weir.
The Team USA champ may not have walked away with from the 2026 Winter Olympics with an individual medal, but she did leave viewers with two unforgettable performances in Milan. Her near-perfect free skate to a medley of “I Will Find You” and “The Return” was already excellent enough to make us forget her stumble in her short program. Days later, she hit the ice for the Exhibition Gala — a scoreless, restriction-free event that allows skaters to showcase their art outside of competition.
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To Lady Gaga’s cover of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life,” Glenn danced across the ice with ease, nailing jumps and showing off a back bend that looks physically impossible to achieve, even on solid ground. The move is called a cantilever and involves spreading your legs in a squat position so that your skates are in a line, then bending backwards, while still moving. It hurts just thinking about it, let alone seeing it. That’s strength and talent that we can’t even fathom.
Watch Amber Glenn’s gorgeous Exhibition Gala skate performance here.
Amber Glenn and Johnny Weir both have iconic skates to Lady Gaga songs
A split of Amber Glenn and Johnny Weir.
Glenn placed 5th overall in the 2026 Winter Games competition, due to a technical error: She failed to complete a triple jump in her short program. Her journey shares a few similarities with that of Johnny Weir, who never won a medal at the Olympics but delivered unforgettable performances —specifically to Lady Gaga. Funnily enough, he was also known for skating to a Sinatra song, with his own 2006 program to “My Way.”
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At 26, Glenn is the oldest American woman to compete in women’s singles figure skating at the 2026 Olympics, where she placed 5th. Weir was 25 at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, where he placed 6th, much to the audience’s confusion.
Post Olympics, Weir began skating in exhibitions to Gaga’s “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance,” and he went all out with his costumes and theatricality. He performed “Poker Face” on TODAY in head-to-toe sparkly mesh, and his routine to “Bad Romance” became legendary.
At the 2011 event Fashion on Ice, Weir skated to “Bad Romance” in a fishnet shirt, suspenders, and a feather skirt while blowing kisses to the delighted crowd. He even perfected a runway walk on ice.
RELATED: Watch Alysa Liu’s Joyous Exhibition Gala Skate in Her Post-Gold Victory Lap
Now, he’s an enormously popular figure skating commentator for NBC, as well as a star of Peacock’s The Traitors. As for Glenn, the athlete figuring out what comes next.
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“I am grateful that my body has held up for this long,” she said, per U.S. Figure Skating. “I will reevaluate after the season’s over and see how I’m doing physically, mentally. I am not opposed to doing a one last season hoorah, just for fun and seeing ‘Hey, let’s see if I can do a quad, see what features I can go for.'”
Hopefully there’s more Lady Gaga-soundtracked skating in her future as well.
