When Amber Glenn was named the top U.S. women’s figure skater for a second consecutive year in January, she collapsed in tears, releasing mountains of pressure that had been weighing on her chiseled shoulders.

This week, she is aiming to add another gold medal to her pile at the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston. If she pulls it off, Ms. Glenn would finish her season an undefeated champion and become the first American figure skater to claim the women’s World Championship title in almost 20 years.

It would be Ms. Glenn’s biggest win yet, but only the latest in a series of firsts for a woman who has landed the triple axel jump in all of her competitions this season — one that, for Ms. Glenn, has been filled with triumph and tragedy after a plane crash in January killed 11 figure skaters, some of whom she had shared the ice with just days before they died.

If Ms. Glenn wins or even medals at Worlds, she will be the first openly L.G.B.T.Q. woman to do so in a sport whose female athletes largely tend to mold their likenesses to that of a cookie-cutter ice queen.

Ms. Glenn, by contrast, has grown her profile by celebrating what makes her different.

She is a pansexual figure skater who jumps with the power of a pole-vaulter, models her hairstyles off those of brassy pop stars, collects lightsabers — and is primed to be America’s next big skating star at 25, an age when most of her peers have long retired.