Jason Brown and his coach, Tracy Wilson, came up with a four-year plan for his competitive skating future a few months after the 2022 Winter Olympics, where Brown had a strong sixth-place finish with personal best scores for the short program and total.
They designed a rather unconventional approach to keep Brown mentally fresh and physically healthy for a run at the 2026 Olympics, where he could become, at age 31, the sixth-oldest Olympic men’s singles competitor in the last 90 years.
The idea was that Brown would do a minimal number of competitions in the 2023 and 2024 seasons and spend relatively little time training in Toronto, staying fit by doing lots of show skating. Then he would do a full competitive schedule this season (fall of 2024 through spring 2025), testing how that worked before following a similar schedule in the upcoming Olympic season.
On the surface, it all went well the first two seasons, with Brown finishing second at both the 2023 and 2024 U.S. Championships and fifth at both the 2023 and 2024 World Championships.
But as Brown looked forward to the 2025 World Championships, at the Boston arena where he had not skated since a career-defining moment at nationals in 2014, the metaphorical wheels – his skates - came off after having wobbled the previous two seasons.
His results this season made it clear something was seriously wrong.
Brown’s highest-value jump, the triple Axel, became an albatross. He botched all eight attempts at the jump in his three autumn competitions, falling on three, popping two and having five judged as underrotated. That followed four seasons in which he had cleanly landed two-thirds of 46 triple Axel attempts.
And his scores plummeted. Brown’s total scores at his two Grand Prix events this season (229.09 and 218.75) were both lower than his total at any competition since 2016. For comparison, he had scored 274.03 and 280.04 in the last two world meets.
“There were times when I was talking with Tracy and I was saying, ‘Is this maybe the end? Am I getting old? Is my body saying you’re done?’’’ Brown said. “It was starting to chip away at my confidence.”
No one outside his training team and family knew it had taken what Brown calls his “Hanukkah boots” to get through the past two seasons.
To understand this explanation requires a brief lesson in Jewish tradition.
Hanukkah commemorates a military victory in 164 B.C. When the Jews retook Jerusalem and rededicated its temple by lighting the lamps that symbolized the Lord’s presence, they found enough consecrated oil to last just one night.
It miraculously burned for eight days. Thus, the eight days of Hanukkah.
And thus the story of Jason Brown’s skating boots, which were supposed to last one season but miraculously made it through three until their “oil” ran out.
It is a story that Brown previously had declined to tell because he is loath to make excuses.
The only suggestion of an underlying problem came in the announcement he was withdrawing from January’s U.S. Championships with “equipment issues.” He did not bring those issues up in a recent Zoom interview until I asked for details.
“When I go to compete, I own whatever happens,” he said. “If I made the commitment to be there and push through, you’re not going to hear me complain about an issue, even if I had a rough skate.
“It was like 2016, when I withdrew from nationals because I was having back problems. They weren’t public until I had to finally withdraw.”
Brown had tried over and over to break in new boots. But when he could not get comfortable with a new pair before an important competition, he had gone back to the boots he first used for the 2022 season.
This season, when he put more stress on his body by returning to a regular training and competition schedule that included much more work on specific program elements, the new boots he was trying began to give him hip pain. And no amount of duct tape or extra interior padding or new tongues were going to make them useable again.
Two days before the Jan. 20 announcement of his withdrawal from nationals, Brown realized there would be no more miracles. On Feb. 3, he began working with boots from a different manufacturer. He has stuck with them.
“It’s all about 2026, and I knew I could not rely on the old pair of boots to get me through the Olympic season,” he said.
Brown said he did not drop out of nationals because he was concerned about skating as poorly as he had the rest of this season.
“It sounds weird, but I was almost more nervous about doing well enough in nationals that I would be in the same (boot) predicament going into worlds,” he said.
Because he missed nationals, Brown had to petition for a place on the U.S. team for 2025 worlds. Unlike in 2016, when worlds coincidentally were also in Boston, his petition this time was granted after U.S. Figure Skating officials determined he would be able to skate well.
So, Brown gets to feel again some of his 2014 Boston experience, even if he insists missing that chance to bring back warm memories would not have been the most upsetting part of not being there.
“Honestly, the most emotionally painful thing would have been to continue making no progress with my boots,” Brown said. “I was solely focused on solving this issue.”
At stake at these worlds are U.S. spots in the Olympic field for 2026. To get the maximum three spots, the finishes of the top two U.S. men must add up to 13 or less (2nd place plus 11th place, 6th place plus 7th place, etc.). With teammate Ilia Malinin favored to win a second straight title (or at least make the podium), a top-10 finish for the second U.S. man would be enough.
In six appearances at worlds, Brown’s lowest finish is ninth. The third man on the team with Brown and Malinin is reigning U.S. silver medalist Andrew Torgashev, who finished 21st two years ago in his only worlds appearance.
In other words, Brown could make a big impact at TD Garden this week, 11 years after his breakout performance from this ice.
For Brown, the memories of 2014 actually begin four years before the stunning Riverdance free skate that would draw 3.5 million YouTube hits in the three weeks between nationals and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. None of his previous competition videos had topped 8,000 hits.
“In 2010, when I was a junior, I watched the seniors compete in Spokane for spots on that Olympic team,” Brown said. “I began thinking it would be such a dream in four years to be competing at that event.”
Brown’s dreams were not much grander when he got to Boston in the senior field, notwithstanding his former coach, Kori Ade, having told him said she was preparing for the 2014 Olympics. After all, he had finished ninth, ninth and eighth in his previous three senior nationals, and the U.S. had earned just two 2014 men’s Olympic singles spots, and Brown had yet to attempt a quadruple jump, which was becoming de rigueur for elite men.
TOKYO, JAPAN - NOVEMBER 08: Jason Brown of the United States competes in the Men’s Short Program during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating NHK Trophy at Yoyogi National Gymnasium on November 08, 2024 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Toru Hanai - International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)
International Skating Union via Getty Images
“What I remember most from the beginning (of 2014 nationals) was that feeling of, ‘Wow, I made it, I’m at this event four years later.’ I was just overwhelmed by that,’’ he said.
He didn’t let all that undo his focus, as was evident when he took third in the short program, a four-spot improvement over his position a year earlier.
“This is so crazy, I could be on the podium,’’ Brown thought.
When he opened his skate bag before the free skate, he discovered a note from his mother, Marla, who wrote, Skate with the joy in your heart and the passion in your soul.
“Reading that note in that moment, I just felt so supported and so loved,” Brown said.
What followed in the free skate began a lovefest between Brown and skating audiences that has lasted more than a decade.
The crowd at TD Garden stood to cheer and applaud when there still were some 15 seconds left in his four-minute, 30-second, high-voltage program based on traditional Irish music and dance. Yet he never saw the audience standing until he stopped skating.
“I felt the energy in the building,” said Brown, then a baby-faced, 19-year-old with a ponytail. “I could feel the excitement build. And I remember telling myself, ‘Not now. Don’t react now. Keep going. Keep going.’’’
He won the free skate and got second overall to four-time U.S. champion Jeremy Abbott. An hour later came the text from USFS saying he had made the Olympic team. Soon after, his younger brother, Dylan, texted to say, “Your skate is going viral.”
He had suddenly gone from just another guy at nationals to THE guy at nationals. It took him a while to understand how singular an experience it was.
“There were so many different things coming at me at once,” Brown said. “It was one of those interesting things where it started to spiral from that moment.
“Prior to (nationals), I didn’t do a lot of press because I really wasn’t on the Olympic radar. And then the next three weeks before the Olympics, there was a lot of attention.
“I thought this is normal, this what comes with making an Olympic team, but I hadn’t gone through it before, so I didn’t know. Looking back at it later in my career, I realized that wasn’t a normal situation.”
At the Sochi Olympics, Brown won a bronze medal in the team event, and his ninth place in singles led the U.S. men. He failed to make the 2018 Olympic team, a crushing disappointment that first had him ready to quit and then led him to change coaches and everything about his training, which included a move from Colorado to Toronto.
So here he is now, back in Boston three months into his 30s, a U.S. champion, an Olympic medalist, an eight-time senior national medalist, an athlete whose refined skating has made him a paragon of technical (and performance) artistry in the sport. He wonders what it will feel like to take the ice for the short program Friday.
“I’m really excited to go back to Boston, but not compare the experience,” he said. “I didn’t strive to create a moment in 2014, and the same is true now, even if there’s a bit of me that is thinking, ‘I want to have another moment like that.’
“Eleven years ago, it happened organically. You can’t recreate a moment. It’s more of a cool memory. And now we’re moving on.’’
Philip Hersh is a special contributor to NBCSports.com. He has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics.
