Loena Hendrickx: The Comeback That Almost Never Happened

Loena Hendrickx © Pinterest

Eighteen months ago, Loena Hendrickx could barely walk on her toes. Triple flips and Lutzes – the jumps that had made her 2024 European champion and World silver medalist – were impossible. Chronic pain, repeated sprains, and a right ankle held together by scar tissue had turned every training session into a gamble. By early 2025 the 26-year-old Belgian was withdrawing from competitions faster than she was entering them. Mentally and physically broken, she faced a brutal choice: surgery with no guarantees or slow-motion retirement.

She chose the knife.

On a February morning in 2025, surgeons in Antwerp tightened the shredded ligaments that had plagued her since a bad landing in 2019. While Kaori Sakamoto, Isabeau Levito and the rest of the world fought for Olympic spots at the 2025 World Championships in Boston, Hendrickx began the longest off-season of her life.

From zero to Olympics in nine months

Recovery was painfully slow and deliberately cautious. She was off the ice completely for ten weeks. When she finally returned in May, sessions lasted five minutes – straight lines only, no edges, no turns, no jumps. Three times a week became four, then daily. Three-turns arrived in June. Single Axels in July. By August she was attempting triples again, but only the ones that land on her left foot. Every flip and Lutz still felt like Russian roulette.

Yet the goal never changed: a third Olympic Winter Games. Beijing 2022 and PyeongChang 2018 had given her a taste; Milano-Cortina 2026 was supposed to be her peak. Missing the main World Championship qualifier meant her only remaining path was the last-chance Olympic qualifier in Beijing in late September – a single competition where one bad day could end everything.

She didn’t have a bad day.

In front of a half-empty arena in China, Hendrickx delivered two clean programmes, landed a triple-triple combination for the first time in almost two years, and took bronze. Belgium’s ladies’ spot for 2026 was secured with a performance that felt less like a qualification and more like a statement: I’m still here.

Osaka: the real test

Six weeks later, the NHK Trophy in Osaka marked her first regular-season Grand Prix in 22 months. Expectations were modest – just finish healthy. Instead she opened with a 70-point short programme, fought through a small free-skate stumble, and left with another bronze behind Wakaba Higuchi and Hana Yoshida. More importantly, her component scores remained elite (several 9.25s for interpretation) and her smile after the final pose was the widest it had been in years.

“Training is fun again,” she told reporters in the mixed zone. “The jumps feel easy. My body is responding. I’m not fighting myself anymore.”

What changed besides the ankle?

The physical fix was only half the battle. The extended break gave Hendrickx something she hadn’t had in a decade: time to breathe. Years of non-stop competing, constant pain management and the pressure of being Belgium’s first legitimate medal threat in ladies’ figure skating had left her burned out. The forced pause became an unexpected reset.

“I recharged completely,” she admitted. “I missed competitions, but I didn’t miss the stress. Now I have both – the love for skating and the excitement for competing – without the darkness that was there last season.”

The road ahead

This week (21–23 November 2025) she heads to Helsinki for Grand Prix Finlandia Trophy, needing a medal to keep her Grand Prix Final hopes alive. A top-six finish in Grenoble in December would be another landmark in what is already one of the most remarkable comebacks of the quadrennial.

Then come the real prizes: defending her European title in January 2026, and finally the Milano-Cortina Olympics in February where – healthy, confident and armed with upgraded technical content she has been quietly testing in practice – she will arrive as a genuine podium threat.

Loena Hendrickx spent years proving Belgium belongs on the figure-skating map. For a while it looked like injury would erase everything she had built. Instead, she rebuilt herself stronger, happier and more dangerous than ever.

The ankle is fixed. The hunger is back. The rest of the world has six months to prepare for a Belgian skater who has already beaten the longest odds.

Source: article on isu-skating.com, published November 19, 2025.

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By Vitalina Andrushchenko, Staff Writer