Jason Brown | Beijing 2022 Olympic Profile
Team USA Figure Skater Jason Brown details his journey from teen Olympian in 2014 to two-time Olympian in 2022 and how he was able to find himself again along the way.
Video Transcript
JASON BROWN: Not making an Olympic team as a teenager, it was something that was so exciting but it happened. Then when you don't kind of enjoy the process or you lose yourself in that solar focus of the Olympics, you kind of lose yourself completely.
And I definitely went through that and after that 2014 team, I had this kind of hyper focus of I need to make another Olympic team to kind of whether it was to prove myself or whether it was nothing will kind of amount to that experience.
So I need to just like that's where my head went and I lost my love for the sport, and I you know, definitely felt burnt out four years ago. I didn't have a direction. I felt like I had more inside of me but I didn't know why I wasn't able to figure out how to perform at the level that I wanted to.
And after that 2018 US Nationals, missing the Olympic team and becoming first alternate, I think having that-- for me that rock bottom, it set me on this trajectory to kind of really break all the barriers and all the rules that I had set for myself to kind of figure out who I was and to kind of find-- rekindle my love for a sport that I knew I loved so much but had lost so much of that love.
And so that's kind of been the last four years. I changed a lot about my training. I moved to countries just to train like just really trying to figure out who I was in the sport and trying to push myself. And so it's been another journey.
What I just think is so special about our sport is that everybody comes at it from a different perspective. Every performer, so different. Every story, so unique and we have this incredible opportunity where we have this opportunity to really tell your story and to be front and center on an Olympic platform.
It is stripped down. We're not wearing helmets or not you know. We are ourselves fully. There's nothing to hide behind. And I think that gives us a really great opportunity to go out there and just show the world who we are and kind of get to show the world what we love to do on the biggest stage.