Jason Brown grew up feeling the magic of the Miracle on Ice, that unforgettable march of the US hockey team to win gold at the 1980 Olympics. in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Never mind that the event pre-dated his birth by 14 years. It’s just something that lives forever in the heart of an athlete in the United States.
Strangely enough, Brown has never competed at that iconic rink in Lake Placid. That will change next week when he competes at Skate America in Lake Placid, in that very spot that still sends shivers down anybody’s spine when they walk in. And they just look, soaking it in.
Apparently, it’s never too late. Brown is now 30, steering precipitously to 31, and aiming for his third Olympic Games. And it’s not crazy. He finished eighth at the past world championship in Boston, and with Ilia Malinin, earned three spots for men at the Games in Milan. He’s still making things happen, contributing to the party.
All of this despite the fact that he hasn’t done quads for the past two seasons at a time in history where his teammate is the Quad God. And it’s a thing for the top male skaters to do two quads in a short program and three or four or five or more in the free. He doesn’t seem hobbled by that.
He can still go toe to toe with them: fourth at the world championships in 2015; 7th in 2017; 9th in 2019; 7th in 2021; 5th in 2023; and 5th in 2024. Brown is a one-man Miracle on Ice.
It will be his first Skate America since 2019, and it will happen here. (Hopefully a predicted snowstorm doesn’t upend the event and send people into the corners.) It will be his sixth Skate America. The first Grand Prix event of his long career was a Skate America.
Brown is the antithesis of Malinin, whose athletic feats are beyond belief. Brown’s feats are elsewhere, in the stretch of a leg, in an impossible spin, in a set of footwork that tingles the spine, in body lines, in arms constantly at work, in the spiral of all spirals, in the art of it all. And thankfully, he is rewarded for these talents.
It hasn’t always been easy. He’s had highs and lows. Second to Malinin at the U.S. championships in 2024, he had to withdraw last year, felled by boot problems that hampered his training. But he can still fire a missile of loveliness, bringing back his “Reel Around the Sun” that introduced him to the world at the beginning of his career, and the poignant “Say Something,” free skate, choreographed by his stylish mentor Rohene Ward, as ever.
To gain an inkling of the Brown essence, watch the footwork sequence of this year’s short program to “Reel Around the Sun.” Although the routine is an echo of the one that gained him prominence in 2013, it’s not the same at all. It’s far beyond. It’s explosively deft and complicated and fascinating.
And how he adds art to athletics? He’ll do a triple flip and before he goes to a double Axel, he’ll pause to do a balance spiral, leg soaring aloft before the final jump of that sequence. And it’s difficult. Nobody does that.
But Brown is the living example that it can be done. He’s a beacon to so many NOT-Quad-Gods. And he takes pride in his longevity. He thought of hanging it up eight years ago, then four years ago. And he’s still here, with flair. Although he says: “mentally this is an end of sorts,” he still doesn’t want to put “a hard stop” to his career after Milan.
“You never know what the future holds,” he said Tuesday in a conference call. He has enjoyed competing in unusual places: Kazakhstan, Georgia as he did this season. He wanted to bring programs that are important to him, visit places he has never seen. He has also never competed at a Grand Prix in Finland, although he has competed in Finland. That will come later this month.
“I ‘m really proud of my consistency and longevity,” he said. Brown hopes the next generation can see that jumping is not all. He’s come to this conclusion after enduring so many times of discouragement, where he had a feeling that he couldn’t keep up, that his work wasn’t valued. But he has found different ways to be successful, and set himself apart from others.
“I shifted the narrative to what success is” he said. “It is not always defined by medals.” He hopes the next generation can feel more special, and not feel as defeated as he did, with that feeling of always falling short. (Got that quad, yet?) He hopes to inspire others to do the same.
For the past quad, he has watched a Quad God, not known for the same exquisite form. But Brown finds it “unbelievable” to watch Ilia Malinin evolve and watch how he deals with the enormous pressure he is under. He’s seen Malinin mature as a person through experience. “He’s a completely different person now,” Brown said. “It’s amazing to see.”
He’s behind Malinin every step of the way, as he was with Nathan Chen. There’s nothing like a friendly face in a warmup group. “I’ve got you Nathan,” he recalls the feeling.
Whether or not Malinin gets the component scores that Brown should get or not, Brown watches him and sees a skater comfortable in his work. He tries his best to give him advice, but truth be told, Malinin is surrounded by a strong support group, and on he goes, exceeding his best. Exploding everywhere, even in Saskatoon last week.
“The biggest thing is to keep doing you,” Brown would tell him. “It’s very easy to get swept along. Ice is slippery. Just find your next step. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Brown learned this when he was catapulted into his first Olympics in Sochi in 2014 as a 19-year-old that suddenly became a social media sensation with his Irish routine, his ponytail flying. The world was charmed. There was even a twitter account called: “Jason’s Ponytail.” But Brown was a deer in the headlights.
He was caught up in a whirlwind and he didn’t know much about anything. He didn’t know how to pace himself. This became important because for the first time, there was also a team event, and he participated in that, too. The Olympics was an event that dragged on for weeks, in comparison to what Brown knew: a world junior championship, over in a week.
“I didn’t have experience how to pace myself,“ he said. “In the end, I was quite cooked.
“I wish I had been able to pace myself and not try to do everything all at once.”
He would advise himself: just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
A complicating factor was the host of people that already had launched him in their minds to the next Olympics and he was reminded of it constantly. ”People kept talking about the next Olympics,” he said. “I hadn’t even competed at a world championship yet.”
He lost sight of everything. He started judging himself, wondering if he could make it another Olympics. As it happened, he missed the 2018 Olympics.
So now in this life, Brown stays in the present each day, focusing only on improving in each moment and staying level-headed through it all. In spite of how magnificent he is on the ice, Brown always searches for a way to do everything even better.
He and Malinin are two different cookies. Every skater develops their artistry at their own pace, Brown says. “Many people love to perform. Others focus on the next jump. People figure out their perfect blend,” Brown said. “In the last four years that I’ve seen Ilia, he’s more comfortable on the ice. He does quads that look like singles in his sleep. He’s able to relax and enjoy being out there.”
Malinin does programs that allow him to connect to his music as only he can. In his free program, he uses his own spoken voice. “He is the only one that can do that piece of music,” Brown said. “It’s up to the artist to create, and interpret. He loves being out there to perform. It’s really inspiring to see.”
Although Brown has never won a world medal, and medals aren’t his only motivation, make no mistake: he is very competitive. He has a fire within.
“I really want people to take me seriously,” he said. “I try to max out the best of my abilities to work the system and sometimes it’s about quality.” He doesn’t take a single moment for granted, he said.
Brown doesn’t have the luxury of falling back on a quad or two if things don’t go well, so he knows he must skate with perfection when he goes out onto the ice.
If he mistakes a single mistake, he falls off a cliff. But he is propelled by the love of the sport. He didn’t get where he is without that love.
He’s proud of what he’s done. He’s finished in the top 10 at every world championship he’s contested. “It’s something to be proud of,” he said. It has taken a lot of reworking of his mental gymnastics to figure out what success means to him in the sport.
“I’ve show not only do I have what it takes but you can be successful in the sport, by doing things differently,” he said.
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