A fall in the Olympics is not enough to keep Bradie Tennell down
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Bradie Tennell doesn’t fall. That’s her thing. Triple Lutz, triple toe, triple loop – it doesn’t matter. Bradie Tennell jumps, Bradie Tennell lands on her blades. The reason Bradie Tennell won the national championship this year and punched her ticket here to PyeongChang is because she doesn’t fall. This is what you can count on.
Can you remember the last time you fell in competition, she was asked?
“No,” she said. “No. I can’t actually.”
She is nothing if not consistent. At competitions, she tries to wake up at the same time. She eats a bowl of corn flakes every day for breakfast. She skates to music from Cinderella because as a kid she was almost always Cinderella for Halloween. Her mother sews her hair net in place.
Before taking the ice, the 20-year-old listens to the same mix of 70s/80s rock music (seriously) she personally created, preferably concluding with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The original from Queen or a cover by someone else, she was asked?
“Oh no, no, no,” she said, pretending that she was insulted by the implication behind the question. You don’t listen to a knock-off version at the Olympics. “The original Queen. Nobody beats Freddie Mercury.”
This is Bradie Tennell, the shy kid, the oldest of three raised by a single mother, Jeannie, who poured her life into her daughter’s skating career, working two jobs as a nurse. “Actually, it might be three,” Bradie said. “I’m not sure. I call her Wonder Woman. To me, she is literally a super hero.”
If this is what her family will sacrifice, then Bradie Tennell will respond with the ability to land jumps. She isn’t the most…
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