The old Amber Glenn might have come undone by what happened during the six-minute warmup for the short program at the Finlandia Trophy Grand Prix event.

Glenn competed in Finland just eight days after undergoing a root canal procedure. And she still was getting antibiotics for a sinus infection that had lingered since summer, with the medicine making her feel tired.

And then she popped her two attempts at her most difficult jump, the triple Axel, in the warmup. Popping – doing a single rotation rather than three - can shake any figure skater’s confidence.

About 45 minutes later, Glenn took the ice for her short program, opened by nailing the triple Axel and went on to win that phase of the competition with her season-best score.

“That was 100% the new Amber,” said Damon Allen, her coach, via telephone.

“She has a lot of techniques, breathing techniques, and ways to keep herself refocused. She knows what she has to do to get job done, and she's gonna make it happen.”

Three mistakes in the free skate left her second overall to Japan’s Mone Chiba, ending Glenn’s Grand Prix win streak at four. Having won Cup of China in late October, Glenn still easily qualified to defend her title at the Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan.

Even having two of the errors on consecutive jumping passes early in the Finlandia free skate did not unnerve her, as it often had in the past.

“Definitely wasn't my best, but I stayed on my feet, and I fought through it,” Glenn said after the free. “I'm really happy with how I did mentally. Physically, I felt like I was only about 80% today. Didn't really feel the normal adrenaline and kind of pep in my step.

“So, hopefully after this I can get a little bit of rest and try and clean up some of those smaller mistakes.”

There wouldn’t be much time for rest. She went from Finland to Innsbruck, Austria to shoot a commercial for Starbucks and trained in Austria while there. (She already was one of the featured faces in NBC’s pre-Olympic ads.) She then flew back to her training base in Colorado Springs the day before Thanksgiving, trained on Thanksgiving (and over the next three days), then flew to Japan.

“You can't discourage her from doing a commercial shoot,” Allen said. “She's all of a sudden being able to capitalize a little bit on her excellence.”

A year ago, still making a name for herself competitively, Glenn defeated five Japanese rivals to become the first U.S. woman to take the Grand Prix Final since Alissa Czisny in 2010. This season, Glenn and reigning world champion Alysa Liu gave the U.S. two women’s spots in the final for the first time since Ashley Wagner and Gracie Gold in 2015.

The other four qualifiers are from Japan: Kaori Sakamoto, the three-time world champion and 2023 GPF winner; Chiba, reigning world bronze medalist and the only woman to win two of the six “regular season” Grand Prix events this fall; Ami Nakai, in the Final during her first season on the senior Grand Prix circuit; and Rinka Watanabe, back in the Final for the first time since 2022.

At a not-very-ancient age 26, Glenn is the oldest of the finalists. She has rejuvenated her career over the past three seasons, getting help from sports psychologists in moving past years of doubting herself to win the last two U.S. titles and put herself in contention for an Olympic medal in February.

The process is ongoing.

“I have the training, and I need to rely on it and not be fearful of disaster,” she said. “It’s having impulsive thoughts, like you’re looking over an edge and (thinking),`What if I fell?’”

And then she imagines just that happening, a figurative situation she has to cope with before attacking her first jump, the triple Axel.

“Sometimes you’re out there in competition, and you’re like,`What if, what if?' What if I’m getting in my beginning pose, and I’m falling over?

“So I just try to trust that as long as I trust what I do every day, those things aren’t going to happen. With every competition over the past year and one-half, I’ve kind of shown myself that I can do this.”

Nowhere has she expressed that better than in her persistence in mastering the triple Axel, which she did not attempt in competition until age 20.

No other U.S. woman has tried as many at the senior level as Glenn’s 37, all solo jumps. Tonya Harding, the first U.S. woman to be credited with landing one in 1991, barely attempted a half-dozen more. Mirai Nagasu, the first (and still only) U.S. woman to land one at the Olympics in 2018, did 12 in her career, and only that Olympic jump received a positive grade of execution (GOE).

According to data from SkatingScores.com, Glenn received negative GOEs on her first 13 triple Axel attempts, from the 2021 through 2023 seasons. Since then, she has received positive GOEs on 17 of the last 24 (one got a neutral 0.00). That includes seven straight positives - all six this season, one in each of her three short programs and free skates.

No wonder Allen laughed after answering, “Nope,” to the question of whether he was concerned by her struggles with it during the Finlandia warm-up.

“It’s really kind of her best jump,” Allen said. “So when she got a little anxious in the warm-up, I was like, `Alright, she's gonna figure this out.’’’

Because the triple Axel’s base value is 5.7 points more than that of a double and 2.1 more than that of any other triple, Allen said he and Glenn thought about having her try two in the free skate. The second would have to be in a combination.

“She played around with it at the beginning of the year, and it was just a little too much,” Allen said. “We’ve got the right equation, the program layout that she feels totally in control of, and we’re not making any changes.”

Glenn remarkably has been consistent all season. Her three short program scores are 73.04, 73.69 and 75.72. Her three total scores are 214.69, 214.78, and 213.41, all close to her personal best (215.54, from last year’s Cup of China.)

She is passionate and powerful in the short, moody and understated in the free.

And relentlessly honest, in her emotions and words.

“I mean, of course it’s hard and a bit disappointing when you’ve had four Grand Prix wins in a row, and then to get second — of course that’s hard,” Glenn said in Finland.

“It’s not like I should have been first. Hell, no. Mone was absolutely incredible. She’s amazing. Even at my very best, I’m not like she is. So, I knew if I wasn’t tip-top perfect ... I wasn’t going to win.”

But she is winning the mental battle with herself, finally allowing her to take full advantage of her talent. That seems like victory enough. The medals have come as a bonus.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at every Winter Olympics since 1980, is a special contributor to NBCOlympics.com.