Bradie Tennell (born January 31, 1998) is an American figure skater. She is a 2018 Olympic team event bronze medalist, the 2025 Four Continents silver medalist and 2020 Four Continents bronze medalist, a four-time Grand Prix medalist, an eight-time Challenger Series medalist, 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. She began working with coach Denise Myers when she was nine, up until August 2020. 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 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.
Personal life 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. When Tennell was 16, her parents had a "bitter divorce"; her father is in her two brothers' lives, but Bradie has cut all ties with him.
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.
Career Early career Tennell won her first competition when she was ten years old. 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.
2014–15 season: Breakout season 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 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. 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". Three months after Nationals, Tennell fractured both wings of a lumbar vertebra and had to spend the summer of 2015 in a back brace.
2015–16 season: Struggles with injuries 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. She won both her sectional and regional competitions, which qualified her for the 2016 U.S. Championships. She came in sixth place at her senior debut at the U.S. Nationals, earning a spot at the World Junior championships, where she came in 11th place overall, after falling three times during her free skate. At Worlds, she came in fourth place in the short program and 14th place in the free skate, earning 147.52 points overall. In June 2016, Tennell had the same back injury as the year before, but to a different vertebra.
2016–17 season: Coming back
Tennell was again in a back brace and off the ice for three months in the summer of 2016 while undergoing intense physical therapy. She was not able to return to the ice until early September 2016. Sean Jacobs of NBC called this period "dark days" for Tennell, who said that wearing a back brace was "very tough". Tennell also said that her mother helped her not give up and to "put things in perspective". She redoubled her off-ice recovery efforts, attempting fewer jumps and taking more physical therapy and Pilates to lessen the chance of future back injuries so that she could come back for the 2016–2017 season. She competed, but the season, along with the 2015–2016 season, "were largely lost" because she was not able to train properly. She later told Time magazine that not being able to skate for months at a time was "not very pleasant or fun for me". She also said that the experience reinforced her love for figure skating and gave her a renewed sense of motivation. Her coach Denise Myers praised Tennell for her tenacity, later saying, "Even when she was injured, it wasn't a matter of if she was coming back, it was a matter of when she was coming back".
Tennell struggled throughout the season; 48 other skaters had higher season's-best scores than her, including seven from the U.S., and she earned 14 points less than the next-highest scoring female American skater. She missed six months of competition over two years, but made her senior international debut in November 2016, at the 2016 Tallinn Trophy, where she came in third place. She had four months to prepare for the 2017 U.S. Championships and came in a "disappointing" ninth place. At the 2017 World Junior Championships, she came in seventh place in both her short program and free skate, coming in seventh place overall and earning a total of 161.36 points.
2017–18 season: Olympic team bronze and first Grand Prix medal Going into the 2017–2018 season, it was the first time Tennell was injury free since the 2014–2015 season. Reporter Nick Patterson called the season "the stuff of childhood fantasies" for Tennell. She began the season as a relative unknown, even within the U.S., but ended the year as a U.S. champion, an Olympic medalist, and "one of the biggest names in American skating". Reporter Philip Hersh called her success "a flight of fancy". Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post said that Tennell overcame her previous injuries and "the inconsistency that so often follows them". Competing at the 2018 Olympics was a goal, although Tennell told reporters throughout the season that she preferred to focus on one competition at a time because thinking about making the U.S. team could be overwhelming for her.
The music to Tennell's short program, choreographed by Scott Brown, was selections from the popular Korean film Taegukgi, a piece of music that was well-known and beloved in Korea. Tennell said that she "fell in love with how powerful" the piece was after a friend recommended it to her. Her coach called the music "a conscious choice", since the 2018 Olympics were in Korea. Her free skate was set to the "Cinderella" soundtrack. Hersh, however, called Tennell's programs "choreographically callow".
Tennell's first event of the season was the 2017 Philadelphia Summer International in early August 2017; she came in first place with a successful triple Lutz-triple toe in both of her programs, which earned her an invitation to Skate America. She came in second place in both the short program and the free skate in Philadelphia and earned 184.98 points overall. Tennell came in fourth place overall at the 2017 Lombardia Trophy, with 196.70 points, coming in fifth place in the short program, third place in the free skate, and beating 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Carolina Kostner of Italy and 2015 world champion Elizaveta Tuktamysheva of Russia.
Going into the 2017 Skate America, her first Grand Prix event as a senior skater, Tennell was "little more than an afterthought" in international figure skating. She competed against three-time U.S. national champion Ashley Wagner and former World Championship medalists Gabrielle Daleman of Canada, Satoko Miyahara of Japan, and Alena Leonova of Russia. She performed two "flawless routines" and came in third place overall; she and Wagner were the only two American women to win Grand Prix medals (both bronze) during the season. Her short program score, 67.01 points, was a personal best.
Tennell "shone" in her free skate, skating a clean program and successfully executing seven triple jumps (four in combination), and earning Level 4 marks for her spins. She earned 137.09 points, also a new personal best. She earned 204.10 points overall, the highest international score by an American woman since Wagner earned 215.39 points at the 2016 World Championships. She was the first U.S. female single skater to win a medal at her first Grand Prix for ten years, since Caroline Zhang in 2007. Tennell's win at Skate America also put her into contention for the U.S. Olympic team, but when she was asked about the possibility that she could compete at the Olympics, her coach Denise Myers said that Tennell had not yet reached her peak. Myers also said that Tennell did so well because she had successfully overcome her past injuries and that when she was healthy, she tended to excel. Tennell was pleased with her performances at Skate America but went home with the goal of working on fine-tuning both her programs for Nationals, including earning Level 4 scores on both step sequences.