United States determine skater Bradie Tennell has addressed rumors that she’s hanging up her blades after backing out of the 2026 World Championships.
“I simply needed to leap on right here to handle a pair issues I see circulating because the Worlds announcement,” Tennell, 28, wrote through her Instagram Tales on Saturday, March 7, referring to her alternative to not compete at this yr’s ISU World Determine Skating Championships. “The choice to surrender my sport was my very own.”
She continued, “It wasn’t one I made flippantly. There was a lot thought and plenty of causes — I wasn’t handed over, and I’m (fortunately) not injured.”
Whereas Tennell didn’t reveal why she deliberate to skip Worlds, she harassed on Saturday that she’s not able to retire.
“Please don’t mistake this for a retirement announcement as a result of that’s not what this implies,” the professional athlete said. “They’re two totally totally different selections. Thanks for the entire concern and assist. I’m doing effectively and really excited to cheer on the crew from afar.”
The 2026 ISU World Determine Skating Championships will probably be held in Prague starting Tuesday, March 24, the place high world athletes compete throughout males’s, girls’s, pairs and ice dancing disciplines.
Tennell made her Olympic debut on the 2018 Winter Video games, the place she helped Staff USA earn bronze within the crew occasion. Tennell sat out the following Olympics cycle amid back-to-back accidents. She returned to competitors forward of the 2026 Video games, ending fourth on the 2026 U.S. Nationwide championships behind Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito. (The trio made up the Staff USA girls’s skating crew on the 2026 Olympics, the place Liu, 20, walked away with the gold medal. The American squad additionally earned first place within the crew occasion.)

“It’s taken me a bit to kind via a few of my feelings about nationals,” Tennell wrote through Instagram in January. “This nationals was about greater than placements & medals. I’ve by no means skated with such pleasure & love for this sport as I did final week. I got here into this competitors figuring out that making the crew was an extended shot. I additionally knew that I needed to exit and skate for the model of myself that I couldn’t 4 years in the past.”
Tennell sustained a season-ending ankle harm in 2023, present process surgical procedure earlier than returning to the ice as soon as she absolutely recovered.
“My purpose grew to become (about) happiness and to go away the ice every single day pleased with what I had completed,” she mentioned in her January assertion. “By way of that shift in mindset, I began to come back again to life. It wasn’t rapid or with out setbacks — restoration will not be linear. However I look again at who I used to be and see a woman who picked herself up time and time once more to indicate the world she isn’t afraid of failure. And I’m pleased with her. With out her, the lady, the athlete I’m right this moment wouldn’t exist.”
