Above: Jason Brown soars through the air at the 2024 World Championships in Montreal.
Photo credit: Getty Images
By Lynn Rutherford
Jason Brown is all in.
After two years of shows and tours, with competitions limited to the second half of the season, the two-time Olympian (2014, 2022) will hit the ice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for Skate Canada International this week, followed by NHK Trophy in Tokyo the second week of November.
“I really did this different type of training, balancing the shows and the competitions,” Brown said. “It was so much fun, and I really loved it. I think for me, it was a great break after so many years of just go, go, go, season after season.”
But after placing fifth at the World Figure Skating Championships in March, he decided there was something he loved even more: the full-time competitive grind. So he hunkered down at Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, his training home since 2018, and limited his off-season performances to one appearance in Sun Valley and a week in Japan to perform in Shizuka Arakawa’s “Friends on Ice.”
“The fire started to burn,” Brown said. “I started to think, ‘It would be cool to be able to do two more whole seasons and one more Olympics.’ I’m not just staying in it because I want an Olympic team, though. I genuinely love the training. I love the process. And of course I would love to be on that Olympic team. My mindset is, I’m all in for the next two seasons, whatever they may bring.”
At age 29, the charismatic skater sounds as motivated as he did more than a decade ago, when his ponytailed charm and “Riverdance” free skate took the skating world by storm, winning him the U.S. silver medal and a spot on the 2014 Olympic team. The following season, he won the U.S. title.
Brown no longer attempts quadruple jumps, but his program component scores (skating skills, composition and presentation) remain the best in the business.
“I'm still getting better; I feel like my spins are faster, my footwork is stronger,” he said. “I want to be a voice in this sport. I really don't want the next generation of athletes growing up and feeling defeated because of an element that they might lack. I don't want people to feel, ‘Oh, I can’t land a quad jump, there is no future in the sport for me.’ Keep working to be the best that you can, keep pushing yourself to work the system in your way.”
Together with U.S. and World champion Ilia Malinin, 19, the veteran skater forms figure skating’s most interesting, and reliable, one-two punch: The sport’s preeminent technician, along with its foremost artist, have combined talents the past two seasons to gain three U.S. men’s spots at the World Championships. Brown is confident that success can continue another two seasons.
“If I was not able to help out the U.S. team, or if I was not keeping up at all, or at least not keeping up with my standards, I would not compete,” he said. “Ilia is making an unbelievable mark with what he's doing, and I'm just in awe of his ability and the way he's handling it all. But I want that next generation to know there are so many different ways you can push the sport and make an impact.”
“You want to be relevant,” Tracy Wilson, Brown’s primary coach in Toronto, said. “You want to go out there knowing you’re raising your game, and you’re raising everybody else’s game. That’s the beauty of it. We can be inspired by others and some of the things they have, and they can be inspired by some of the things that we have.”
Wilson, who supported her skater’s decision to balance shows with competition the last few seasons, is delighted Brown has re-dedicated himself to training.
“There comes a point where you have to be in the practice rink, you have to give yourself time, you have to give your body a rest,” she said. “You can’t just be on this frantic pace and just hope that everything is going to go well. So I think this is how he raises his game. If he is looking ahead to competing at Worlds in Boston this season, we’re counting on the fact that this work now will help him to that end.”
Brown’s routine is tightly structured. Section work and program run-throughs alternate with Wilson’s stroking classes, where the focus is on edges. The skater credits a strict off-ice regimen, including Pilates, with keeping him fit.
“Training through the summer was another great learning experience for me and Tracy,” he said. “Now, we have a much better idea of how to handle next summer.”
Early this month, Brown traveled to China for Shanghai Trophy, where he recovered from a fall on a triple Axel in his short program to win a bronze medal. There, he unveiled two new programs, both choreographed with longtime collaborator Rohene Ward: a short to the 2016 soundtrack of Legend of Tarzan, and free skate to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror).”
“Spiegel im Spiegel” is the second free Ward and Brown created this season. Their first choice was scuttled due to copyright issues.
“Who knows, maybe I’ll use it eventually, if we can get it cleared,” Brown said. “But there we were in the middle of the summer, and we were like, ‘Uh oh, we still don’t have anything.’ So Rohene played this piece, 'Spiegel im Spiegel,' which I had heard before, and I really loved it. The last time I did a piano piece for my free, I skated to “The Piano” and that was 2015-16 and 2016-17.”
The program emphasizes Brown’s purity and elegance of movement, while incorporating moments of showmanship, including a one-handed cartwheel transition out of a combination spin.
“Rohene felt this would be our way of showing even more growth, using one piece of music for the entire four minutes and focusing on the simplicity, the lines, the extension,” Brown said. “That was our mentality with that, to show a beauty of our sport that only comes with age, experience and maturity.”
Legend of Tarzan was choreographed last season as a free skate, but with limited training time, Brown returned to his 2022-23 program, The Impossible Dream.
“I still had so much love and determination to figure out how to make that program work,” he said. “So I talked to [Ward] and said, ‘Let’s see if we can revamp it and change it up into a short program.’ And so that's what we did. We changed the meaning of the program, what we were going for, and a lot of the choreography.”
While Wilson did not accompany Brown to Shanghai, she communicated with him frequently and studied video of the programs.
“That tune-up competition is really important; you can be in shape in the practice rink, but when you get out there on the competition rink, it’s completely different,” Wilson said. “Jason was able to get the programs out, not perfect, but we’re not expecting them to be perfect. In the short program, he thought he had a lot of gas in the tank; in the free program, he ran out of gas. It’s energy management. He got some valuable insight for Skate Canada.”
When Brown takes the ice in Nova Scotia, it will be his 17th Grand Prix event. He has medaled nine times, including silver medals at Skate Canada in 2017 and 2021. He is still looking for his first Grand Prix gold.
“Who knows what can happen on the day of the event?” he said. “There’s so much that goes into the sport, and sport in general is all about unpredictability and possibilities.
“In my career, it's crazy to think I competed with Evgeni Plushenko and Brian Joubert, that I was there at the end of that generation. They had long careers, and I don’t think you see that as much nowadays. People are having shorter careers. And I want people to know what you can do if you stick around. There are so many paths —there is so much you can do.”
Don't miss Jason Brown compete at 2024 Skate Canada International this week. For a full schedule, results and more, visit the Grand Prix Series Competition Central.
