Amber Glenn, Ezra Frech Join Dancing With the Stars in Historic Olympic-Paralympic Gold Medal Cast

NEW YORK — Olympic figure skater Amber Glenn and Paralympic track and field champion Ezra Frech will compete on the new season of “Dancing with the Stars,” joining a 16-celebrity field announced Wednesday on “Good Morning America” and giving the long-running ABC series its first pairing of an Olympic gold medalist and a Paralympic gold medalist in the same season.

Glenn, 26, will dance with professional partner Pasha Pashkov. Frech, 21, is paired with Daniella Karagach. Season 35 is scheduled to open with a two-night premiere on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. Eastern on ABC and Disney+. Episodes are set to stream the following day on Hulu.

The announcement puts two of the most decorated young American athletes of the current Olympic cycle onto a ballroom floor that has long favored gymnasts, skaters and other competitors with elite body control. It also creates a calendar problem for Glenn, who is still listed on the fall Grand Prix figure skating circuit, and a high-visibility platform for Frech as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In the official reveal package, Frech put the ambition in a single line: “I won the gold and hopefully the mirror ball.” Glenn, introduced as the skater who might take a triple Axel from the ice to the studio, answered, “Wait until you see my flare.”

A dream Glenn has talked about for years

Glenn is not arriving as a reluctant celebrity booking. Months before the cast reveal, she said the show had been on her list since she watched ice dancer Meryl Davis win Season 18 in 2014.

“I would love to do ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Oh my God, it’s been a dream of mine since I saw Meryl do it in 2014,” she said on the “House of Maher” podcast hosted by rugby Olympian and former contestant Ilona Maher. She told Maher she could talk “all day” about the sets, music, makeup and costumes.

“I just have so much respect for it, and it’s so beautiful,” Glenn said. “I’ll listen to songs, and I’ll just see it in my head. Like ‘This would be perfect for that,’ and ‘This would be perfect for this.’”

After the Milano Cortina Games, she was asked about a post-Olympic bucket list. Her answer was immediate.

“‘Dancing with the Stars’ for sure,” she said. “I just love everything about it. The costuming, the set design.”

On the same podcast, she floated Alan Bersten or Ezra Sosa as possible partners and said she was open to a same-sex pairing. Maher told her Pashkov was “hilarious.” She landed with Pashkov.

What Glenn brings from the ice

Glenn, from Plano, Texas, won the last three U.S. figure skating titles and made her Olympic debut in 2026. She helped the United States win team-event gold and finished fifth in the women’s individual competition. She is one of the few women to land a triple Axel in competition and became the first U.S. woman to land three triple Axels at a single Olympic Games.

She is also the first openly LGBTQ+ U.S. women’s figure skating champion and has used that platform to talk about visibility, inclusion and mental health. A free-skate program to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” drew a personal note of praise from Madonna during the Olympic season.

Figure skaters have a strong record on the series. Kristi Yamaguchi won Season 6, Davis won Season 18 and Adam Rippon won the all-athletes Season 26. NBC Sports noted that Glenn could become the fourth skater to take the Mirrorball. It also noted a difference: the 10 previous figure skaters who competed on the show had finished their elite careers, even if some had not formally retired. The last skater in the ballroom was Johnny Weir in 2020.

Glenn has not said how the series will affect her skating calendar. In April she said she did not want to stop competing “as long as my body keeps going and is healthy.” In June the International Skating Union assigned her to Saatva Skate America and NHK Trophy in Japan, Grand Prix events scheduled for November. Recent “Dancing with the Stars” seasons have run into late November or early December for couples who reach the final four.

Frech’s path from the track to the ballroom

Frech is a Los Angeles native born May 11, 2005, with congenital limb differences. He was born without most of his left leg and without several fingers on his left hand. He received his first prosthetic as an infant and later had surgery to amputate the lower portion of the left leg. He competes in the T63 classification.

At the 2024 Paris Paralympics he won gold in the 100 meters and the high jump. He also competed at the Tokyo Paralympics as a teenager and is aiming at the 2028 Games in his hometown. He has competed for the USC Trojans and works as a model, motivational speaker and disability-rights advocate.

He is co-founder of Angel City Sports, which provides adaptive sports training, equipment and competition in Southern California and hosts the Angel City Games. In a 2024 interview with the Los Angeles Times he described that work as a responsibility.

“I feel I have the beautiful burden to share my story and inspire the next generation because this community means the world to me,” Frech said.

He is the first Paralympian on “Dancing with the Stars” since alpine skier Danelle Umstead in 2018 and only the second Summer Paralympian and Paralympic gold medalist after swimmer Victoria Arlen in 2017. Snowboarder Amy Purdy, a Paralympian, reached the Season 18 finale.

Karagach, his partner, was a Season 34 standout with Dylan Efron. Adaptive athletes have succeeded on the show when choreography is built around a prosthetic, a sit-ski background or a different center of gravity rather than treated as a limitation. Frech’s events — sprinting and jumping off a blade — reward timing, air awareness and explosive power, traits producers have sold for years as transferable to Latin and ballroom.

A crowded Season 35 field

Glenn and Frech are two names in a large cast that mixes athletes with actors, reality television personalities and working dancers.

The full lineup announced Wednesday includes Jenna Dewan with Val Chmerkovskiy, Julia Stiles with Ezra Sosa, Harry Shum Jr. with Jenna Johnson, Tatyana Ali with Jan Ravnik, chef Giada De Laurentiis with Alan Bersten, Hanson singer Taylor Hanson with Britt Stewart, “Bachelorette” alum Tyler Cameron with returning pro Sharna Burgess, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez with Witney Carson, Savannah Bananas player Jackson Olson with Emma Slater, “Summer House” star Ciara Miller with Brandon Armstrong, “Love Island” and “The Traitors” personality Maura Higgins with Mark Ballas, comedian Connor Wood with Rylee Arnold, “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” personality Conner Leavitt with new pro Adele Zaikman, and Sarah Jane Nader with newly promoted pro Hailey Bills in a same-sex pairing.

Dewan and Shum Jr. arrive with professional dance credits. Stiles starred in “Save the Last Dance.” Ali’s sitcom run overlapped with co-host Alfonso Ribeiro’s. That depth of performance experience is why athletes are rarely automatic favorites after Week 1. Judges score technique, timing and characterization, not medals.

Olympians have still been a constant on the series since Season 1. Speedskater Apolo Ohno, gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Laurie Hernandez, and several figure skaters won the trophy. Last season, gymnast Jordan Chiles reached the finale. Rugby player Ilona Maher became one of the show’s most-watched recent athletes. Glenn has already said she studied that lane.

What the booking signals

For ABC and Disney, the pairing is a straightforward ratings play: a freshly minted Olympic champion and a Paralympic star from Los Angeles, announced 13 days before premiere week. For U.S. Figure Skating and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, it is another prime-time window in a non-Games year.

For Glenn, it is the entertainment project she has described in public for months, slotted against a Grand Prix season she has not abandoned. For Frech, it is a national stage between Paris and Los Angeles, consistent with the advocacy he has done since childhood.

Neither has to win for the booking to matter. The Mirrorball is decided by judges’ scores and viewer votes. History says skaters can go far if they translate edge work into footwork. History also says a 16-couple season is long, unforgiving and often kinder to contestants who can act a story than to contestants who can only jump.

The first live scores arrive Sept. 15. Glenn will be judged on whether ice quality becomes ballroom quality. Frech will be judged on whether a sprinter and high jumper can make a prosthetic and a partner look like one instrument. Both already said, in different words, that they came for more than a cameo.