Camden Pulkinen was on a roll.
The 25-year-old figure skater from Gilbert had captivated crowds at the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating Championships with routines that blended technical ability with the unique artistry fans know him for. His performance landed him a bronze medal.
Then, he did it again the next year, snagging third place at the 2025 Nationals in Wichita, Kansas. That put him on the podium next to Ilia Malinin and Andrew Torgashev, both of whom are representing Team USA at Milan.
A spot on the three-member 2026 U.S. men’s Olympic team certainly seemed a realistic goal.
A wunderkind since his junior figure skating days, Pulkinen competed in nearly every major figure skating competition from the national to the international stage. A 2024 Olympics.com article described him as “consistently among the best male skaters from his country.” Commentators at the 2022 U.S. Figure Skating Championships called him “the next big thing.”
Everything was lining up for Camden until a major and lingering back injury, originally diagnosed as a herniated disc in April, changed everything.
In a December Instagram post, he told supporters he was making the difficult decision to withdraw from the 2026 U.S. Championships, effectively ending his chances of qualifying for the Olympics. “I’ve done 20 years of skating in my life so far and I’ve worked my whole life for this, but I don’t want to be crippled at 25 and not be able to move anymore,” Pulkinen said a week ago via Zoom.
“The Olympic motto is ‘faster, higher, stronger,’ and I internalize that in everything I do, but I don’t think that should come at the cost of your quality of life or your body or your mental health.”
The road to Milan Cortina
Pulkinen was never shy about his Olympic aspirations. For Pulkinen, who began his figure skating journey at 5-years old, training for the Games started when he was a kid. He had a decorated career as a junior figure skater, winning a silver medal at the 2017 Junior Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan, and a gold medal at the 2018 U.S. Junior Championships in San Jose, California.
“From the time he was little, he just had that ability to catch on to things quickly,” said his former coach Karen Gesell. “He’s a big jumper, he’s very charismatic, and he carried that onto the ice in his programs.”
Gesell trained Pulkinen when he started skating at the Ice Den Scottsdale with the Coyotes Skating Club and was with him for 10 years throughout his meteoric rise to his junior debut at the 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“His goal was always to go as far as he could go, and I always saw he had the potential to be an Olympian,” Gesell said.
Pulkinen has come close to the Olympics before. In 2016, he skated at the Winter Youth Olympics in Hamar, Norway, making him the first male figure skater to compete as part of Team USA for the men’s singles event. In 2022, he was even selected as an alternate for the American team at the Beijing Olympics alongside Malinin, current Team USA athlete and gold-medal favorite.
“I was really in that next cream of the crop that was ready to go,” he said. “I was ready to push from 2022 until 2026 for the Games. I failed to recognize that four years is a long time. This season is the one that really matters. No one really remembers what you did in 2024, 2023 or 2022. 2026 is the Olympics.”
The cost of higher, faster, stronger
Pulkinen had been battling lower back pain he said was caused by taking too many hard falls on the ice. What began as a persistent dull ache, grew to the point of crippling whenever he moved, which made training impossible.
He first recognized the signs of a severe injury after his performance at the 2025 Four Continents Championships in Seoul, South Korea, where he finished eighth.
“I remember clutching my back as soon as I finished my free skate in Korea last year,” he said. “I’ve always had back pain through skating, but never to the point of crippling back pain where I couldn’t actually skate.”
Pulkinen admits he has always been an overachiever. He continued to compete from 2021 through 2025 while he was a full-time student at Columbia University and a corporate strategy associate at Capital One.
But with his injury forcing him to take a step back from skating, he said he had time to reflect on his life independent of the sport.
“What I miss most is moving on the ice freely and carving my soul and identity into the ice,” he said in his December Instagram post. “To have that taken from me is the deepest pain, one that carries the weight of feeling as though I have let down past versions of myself.”
Supporting Team USA from the sidelines
With the Olympics already underway, Pulkinen is not trying to mask his disappointment. He is, after all, “Camden the skater.” But it is a version of himself he keeps distinct from the one seen by members of Team USA he calls friends before rivals.
“I know each one of them personally and some of them are some of my best friends and toughest competitors,” he said. “I think I’ve roomed with every single one of the competitors at some major international competition at this point. I wish I were there, of course, but I’m 100% certain that we’re going to go and deliver to the best of our ability.”
Day 1 of figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics ended on Friday with the U.S. at the top of the rankings. Team USA ice dance, pair skating and women’s singles delivered strong performances to beat out Japan and Italy for first place.
Pulkinen said he was particularly excited to see Malinin, nicknamed the “quad god” for his mastery over difficult quadruple jumps, compete in the men’s single skating short program on Saturday.
“I’m always excited to see what Ilia whips out,” he said. “I’m hoping we can see some cool backflips and maybe seven quads.”
But Pulkinen’s absence from this year’s Olympics has raised questions in online fan spaces about the future of his skating career. The next Winter Olympics are set to take place in 2030 in the French Alps, and Pulkinen will be 29, past the age most male competitive figure skaters retire.
Pulkinen said it’s still too early to make a call on whether he would try to qualify for the next Winter Olympics, but one thing’s for sure. He plans on staying on the ice one way or another.
“I’m not closing the door to skating,” he said. “I love the sport. I don’t know if that means I make a run for 2030. I don’t know if that means I take a different role like a coach or choreographer. The thing that’s true is I will never not be a skater.”
Erika Tulfo is a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona figure skater Camden Pulkinen reflects on missing Olympics
