For Jason Brown I didn’t take all the screenshots I did for Shoma Uno, Yuma Kagiyama, and Nathan Chen. It’s a long job, so at first I ignored Brown. Then I started watching the video of his SP at 25% speed, without the music, that always affect our judgment (but at 25% speed the music becomes more of an annoying noise than anything else), and concentrating on his feet. Now of the triple flip, I knew I had to dedicate a post to Brown. When I reached the triple axel I blocked the video, wrote this short introduction and started the video again. These are not screenshots of the entire program, just a few moments.
Start. For a moment Brown remains balanced on his left leg only, while his right is stretched forward, almost horizontally. Then the right leg goes on the ice, but does not go down perfectly vertically. No, the left leg is straight, and when the right foot is on the ice, it is slightly inward from the center of gravity. This allows Brown to push harder, at the moment he is still, so he has to gain speed, but it is also a slightly more difficult gesture to control. I guess Brown has already tested his sense of balance here more than Uno or Chen did in their entire program.
Should it be a three on the left foot? In the beginning the edge is really slightly inside, after the change of direction it is flat. Still, it’s a one-foot change of direction, better than a mohawk. Easy but good position at the exit.
Then there’s a crossunder. I’m using Roseline Winter and Elisa’s analysis to aid me for some of the names. I see that it’s a push, but I’m still learning all the differences. Sometimes I’m sure of what I’ve seen, sometimes not. Roseline and Elisa’s analysis is here:
Of course, Roseline and Elisa analysed Nationals, I’m watching Olympic Games. They are two different programs, so there are some small differences. But if I need an aid from time to time, I’m also able to see several thing for myself. So, crossunder, followed by a little backward glide in a better position than the position of some other skaters. It’s easy, but it’s beautiful.
0:52 a mohawk, then a three and 2 seconds of two feet glide.
At this point Brown is looking for speed. First he does two crossovers, then a crossunder. I look at the moment between crossovers and crossunder.
For a moment Brown stretches out. It’s less than a second, he’s focused on speed, but he’s stretching his body, something none of the others have done, not like that. There are different ways to seek speed, they can do it by bending, showing all the effort, as Uno does, or by stretching, embellishing the movement, as Brown. For the components, these are two very different gestures.
Mohawk with a long glide, two strokes.
1:00 rocker. Really good outside edge before, clear edge after.
1:01 counter, perhaps hopped, but i think it’s correct.
1:02: three turn and 3F. So, immediately before a good jump Brown does a rocker and a counter. Ok, it’s a triple, but even so… And a judge gave to him a +2?
Mohawk, crossover, push… In the front shot at 1:10 he doesn’t seem particularly elegant to me, but he try to put something in the choreography. And since the Beijing camera isn’t the best, I also do a screenshot from Roseline’s video for a side view. I guess I just understood why someone, when is outside of the ice, tries the movements in front of the mirror looking at himself from all sides.
Again crossover, then a three immediately followed by a swing of the left leg on a good outside edge and a change of foot and direction with some choreo movement of the arms.
A… mohawk? choctaw? The second edge seems flat to me. Then a three.
1:17 high kick.
1:19 after putting briefly the left leg on the ice, Brown has a really good right inside edge.
1:21 he turns, puts his left foot on the ice and does the axel. There was a few moments when he picked up speed, but never too many seconds in a row, he did different variations in his movements.
The edge on landing is slightly less beautiful than that of the flip, the axel is not his favorite jump and it shows, but there is no real problem.
Some crossover and push, at 1:26 there’s a little jump. For me in the screennshot Brown is not really elegant, but the jumps fits well in the choreography, and i love the way in which it ends in a lunge.
Crossunder, and split jump, and this time he is really elegant.
What Brown does is a continuous flow. There is only one push between lunge and split jump, some are needed because skaters have to pick up speed somewhere, but one or two pushes (crossover, crossunder, mohawk, various push) in a row are not a problem. Several consecutive seconds yes.
He land, and immediately start a spin. After there is a toe push, a knee slide and a little jump. Both the knee slide and the jump are easy, but Brown does the movements one after the other, without the need to separate them by a push or a movement that allows him to stabilize his balance so as not to take risks. Why are Brown’s programs good to watch? Because he does something all the time, and that something is not running. In principle I have nothing against running, but if I want to watch skaters do their best to go fast, I look at short track, not figure skating.
A three, and at 1:44 Brown start running. He too run sometimes. 1:51, after 7 seconds, a beautiful split jump with half turn.
Ina bauer.
9 seconds of run, at 2:02 there is a three.
2:06 (after a mohaws): take off of the combination. This is the only time that Brown did a long run before a technical element.
True, Brown takes the run-up before his most difficult element. Uno, Kagiyama and Chen do quadruple jumps, which Brown doesn’t, and it’s easier to do a no-run triple than a no-run quadruple. But Uno, Kagiyama and Chen take the points of the base value of the jumps, points deserved (at least if the rotations are complete, but that’s another matter), Brown does not take those points. Brown makes the transitions, he deserves the points in the PCS, points that the other three skaters don’t deserve. They are different choices, and judges should take this into account, not assigning high PCS to the various Uno, Kagiyama and Chen just because they completed two quads with no particular errors.
After the combination there is the step sequence.
Jump with half turn and high kick.
I don’t do the screenshot, but there are several little twirl on the toe pick.
Something says to me that Brown loves split jumps and high kick. I understand him, he can do a straight line with his legs, not all the skaters can do the same.
Choreo movement after a half tun jump. Can I suggest to him to use more a mirror?
Glide with a high leg, something that other skaters can’t do.
Lunge. He lowered more than what is seen in this screenshot, but the angle of the video was frontal and the image worse.
Inside spread eagle.
After several steps, some necessary for the level of the step sequence and others not, Brown shows us that beside the side split he can also do the front split. I get the impression that he adds more difficult things to the step sequence than what Uno, Kagiyama and Chen add.
And this is the way in which Brown ends his front split:
He puts his second foot on the ice at 2:51, after a 4-second slide, two of which he spent in a spiral with the foot higher than the head, the leg straight, a nice outside edge and a nice curve. And when he put the toe pick on the ice, he does a pivot.
End of the step sequence and spin.
Two steps, last spin.
Butterfly.
Two knee slide and end.
There was only one moment when Brown war focused on running, before the combination. In all other cases he has given variety to his movements, often with difficult moves, and even when he has made simple movements he has done two or three in a row, a feature that makes the whole more difficult. On a few occasions he has tested his sense of balance, and several of his jumps (obviously I’m not talking about the three mandatory jumping elements) are more than just little hops.
Also for Brown I made the same graphs that I did for the other skaters, based on the indications of Roseline and Elisa. The data refer to the national championship, there are some small differences, but this gives you an idea of how the program is built. If you don’t know how to read the charts, I have provided the explanations in the previous three posts.
In the table where we can see how he distributed the steps in relation to the difficult steps or technical elements, there are one column more respect of the table of the other skaters. The right column, difficult or element, indicates the difficult steps and elements performed by the skater. The other columns indicate, for each difficult step or element, whether that movement was preceded (top row) or followed (bottom row) by a push (PS), a simple transition (tr) or a difficult turn (D). For Brown I needed a column more (E), for a difficult step or an element executed before or after another difficult step or element.
What Brown does is much more difficult than what Uno, Kagiyama or Chen does. These are the scores they received in the components, from the best to the worst.
| Chen | Brown | Kagiyama | Uno | |
| SS | 9,57 | 9,29 | 9,50 | 9,43 |
| TR | 9,39 | 9,39 | 9,25 | 9,21 |
| PE | 9,71 | 9,54 | 9,54 | 9,36 |
| CO | 9,68 | 9,50 | 9,46 | 9,39 |
| IN | 9,64 | 9,57 | 9,46 | 9,46 |
| PCS | 47,99 | 47,29 | 47,21 | 46,85 |
Chen better than Brown and Brown only slightly better than Kagiyama and Uno? Are we joking?Nobody dreams of raising Brown’s base value because he makes so many transitions. Why are the PCS of the other skaters raised just because they does quadruple jumps? Brown deserved his marks in components, the other three did not.
