It was noon Friday, and the Blackhawks Ice Center just west of downtown Chicago was teeming with teenage hockey players and their equipment.
Three of the center’s four ice surfaces were in use for a weekend hockey tournament. The fourth rink, where Jason Brown was headed, would be filled with 16 figure skaters of various ages and skill levels, from the abilities that have made the 31-year-old Brown a two-time Olympian to those of tiny 8-year-olds trying to master a waltz jump.
Brown folded up the workout mat he had squeezed into one unoccupied space in a lobby behind one of the rinks. He put the devices used to stretch and warm up back into a small roller suitcase, laced his skates and walked over to the fourth rink, where an open freestyle session was beginning.
For the next hour, he would run through the programs to be unveiled this week at Saatva Skate America, work on individual jumps and try to avoid running into one of the younger skaters weaving across the ice, blissfully unaware of just how fast Brown can move. At one point, his coach/choreographer, Rohene Ward, would need to motion emphatically to shoo a skater from a spot in the line of Brown’s backward takeoff for a triple Lutz jump.
The experience of dodging other skaters was more uplifting than annoying to Brown. It took him back 20 years or so, to when he was living at the family home in Highland Park, 25 miles to the north, and training at Chicago area rinks where workouts also were not divided by skill level.
“I grew up with that,” Brown said. “To see those kids out there in their own world is pure joy.”
Joy from skating had been in short supply for Brown in the several months after a startlingly poor free skate at January’s Prevagen U.S. Championships ,which he unhesitatingly calls “disastrous.” It included two falls, three popped jumps and just one clean triple jump, and it received a score that was his lowest in 13 seasons. He had been third despite a lightly flawed short program but dropped to eighth overall.
Brown actually could see it coming. And yet it still caught him unprepared.
After all, if there had been one thing constant about Brown’s lengthy career as a senior skater, it was his consistency, especially at major events.
In an era when quadruple jumps became the coin of the realm, the quad-less Brown had still cashed in: a gold medal, four silvers and three bronzes at nationals since 2014; and three top-eight finishes at the World Championships that helped the U.S. to get the full allocation of three men’s singles spots at the Olympics the next season.
Two of the three times, in 2018 and 2026, he didn’t get one of the Olympic spots he helped earn. He won an Olympic team event bronze medal in 2014.
“Things were not quite right for a while (last season), and I was just trying to make it work,” he said. “It was OK enough that I kept saying, ‘Just keep pushing through, put your head down, do the work.’”
He was uncomfortable in his skates. He felt exhausted, almost burned out. He and his coach the past eight years, Tracy Wilson, couldn’t pinpoint whether the issues were physical, mental or emotional.
He arrived at the 2026 Nationals in St. Louis wondering if he could make it through practices. He was simply overwhelmed.
“I’ll never know the exact reason,” he said.
Brown had been ready to retire from competition and move back to the Chicago area after the 2022 Olympics, where he finished sixth, less than two points from fourth, with two error-free programs.
His fluidity of movement and his dynamic spinning produced component scores in both programs that were second only to those of champion Nathan Chen.
One thing led to another in the fall of 2022, and he decided to keep competing. By that November, he had returned to Toronto, a city he had come to love.
He also had a nonpareil training environment there at the Cricket Club, where the coaching team led by Brian Orser and Wilson produced two world and Olympic champions (and three Olympic gold medals) and a third world champion in a nine-year span.
In the 2023 and 2024 seasons, Brown split his time between doing shows and doing competition, hoping that balance would provide him needed diversion. He skipped the Grand Prix circuit both seasons. The results would be good: two second places at nationals, two fifths at worlds.
“Even though those first two years were very successful when it came to the competitions, it wasn’t like they were perfect behind the scenes,” Brown said. “Sometimes I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God, I am struggling hardcore,’ and I’d get to the event and be like, ‘I don’t know what just happened, but I’m feeling great.’”
He nevertheless returned to full competitive mode in the next two seasons. He felt his new sponsors deserved a thorough commitment for their investment.
“I got super focused on, ‘I’m gonna give absolutely everything I have, so I look back and have no regrets,’” Brown said. “Part of me wonders if I should have (kept doing it) the other way. And the other part of me wonders if I had done it the other way, would I have felt guilty?
“Giving up more of the laissez-faire (approach) definitely took a toll. It took a little bit of the joy, of feeling I’m out here because I love it.”
And the results weren’t as good.
And, for the second time in eight years, an uncharacteristically poor free skate at nationals would end his Olympic hopes.
This second time, he has followed through on the predetermined plan to stay in Chicago.
“Fourteen years away was long enough,” Brown said. “I’m so happy to be home and back with my family.”
He came back when the Stars on Ice tour ended in late May, spent the last week of October training with Wilson at the Cricket Club and, on Nov. 1, moved the last of his belongings out of his rented Toronto apartment and sold his car. He was on home turf after four-plus years in Colorado and eight-plus in Canada.
“I didn’t leave Toronto because I don’t like the (coaching) team there,” he said, noting happily that Wilson and Orser expect to be at Skate America. “I LOVE that team. I love Tracy. I love the off-ice work.
“I wanted to move my life forward. Toronto for me was always a temporary training location.”
He is living in Chicago with older sister Jordan and her family, including Brown’s 2-year-old nephew, Nico, while looking for a place of his own. His younger brother Dylan, recently married, also lives in the city. His parents, Marla and Steve, remain in Highland Park.
Ward, 43, a former singles skater who also lives in Chicago, has choreographed all but three of the competition programs Brown has used since the 2011-12 season, including the two for this season. The short is based on the dark, moody TV series, “Traitors.” The free uses Cody Fry’s cover of “Over the Rainbow.”
“It’s a clear metaphor,” Brown said of the free skate music. “After the really difficult moments comes beauty. If you can weather the storm, you can get the rainbow.”
The skies began to clear for Brown midway through the Stars on Ice tour, especially after he weathered the emotions of the stop in St. Louis’ Enterprise Arena. It was there his Olympic hopes had been crushed five months earlier.
Philip Hersh/Special to NBCSports.com
“After the U.S. Championships, I kind of mentioned that being out in front of the audience, I was so uncomfortable,” Brown said. “(When I came back there), I was so scared that that was going to be the normal.
“I wondered, ‘Is the thing that I love to do almost more than anything going to scare me? Am I never going to want to perform again? Am I never going to feel comfortable performing again?’
“As the tour went on, that dissipated, and I was like, ‘Gosh, I love this! Oh my gosh, like that was so healing.’”
Brown long has been an audience favorite, and the huge crowds at every stop on the tour greeted him with especially boisterous clapping and cheering. At the Allstate Arena in suburban Chicago, the decibel level for his introduction to the sellout crowd rivaled what Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Ilia Malinin heard.
When it came time for Brown last spring to discuss his plans for this season with U.S. Figure Skating officials, he decided to leave the door open for another appearance at the U.S. Championships. To do that, he would either have to qualify by skating in two national events or get a bye from competing in two Grand Prix events. He chose the latter, knowing that he could change his mind about competing.
“It was my way of still avoiding making a decision, but I figured if I’m going to compete anyways, why not do it that (Grand Prix) way versus doing it the qualifying way?” Brown said.
“That’s really how it began. And then I really let the chips unfold naturally. I wasn’t forcing anything.”
He then had to deal with a strained right calf that kept him from jumping for nearly two months over the summer. At Skate America, he plans just one triple Axel rather than his customary two in the free skate, hoping to add another at a later competition.
“We’re working through things,” Brown said.
Jumping has been and remains necessity rather than ecstasy for Brown. Not having quad(s) has kept him from winning a medal on the world stage, but it has also not kept his skating from winning the appreciation of judges and enthusiasts alike.
“I continue to do the sport because the audience has carved a path for me,” Brown said. “It’s so important for me that I’ve carved a path for these future generations of athletes to believe they can be taken seriously, and that there is a spot for them in the sport if they might not be able to do the hardest elements.
“People have said, ‘Oh, the sport’s moving in a direction where that’s not possible.’ My reply is, ‘Let me show you (my results.’) Here’s this kid who unfortunately or fortunately or whatever can’t do a quad but is still year after year getting top 10.”
Brown turns 32 next month. He hopes to build a coaching team in Chicago and to create an ice show some day. He wants to do more work with the Ronald McDonald House, which he has supported for more than a decade.
He would be 35 at the time of the 2030 Winter Games. Were he to make the team, he would be the fourth-oldest U.S. men’s Olympic singles skater ever, according to Olympedia.org. The three oldest competed in 1932 or earlier. Only two others since have been in their 30s (Brian Boitano in 1994 and Todd Eldredge in 2002).
“Could I be trying in four years? Maybe,” Brown said. “But another Olympics won’t change my life or make me feel more valued.”
Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 13 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.
