Anyone who watched Jason Brown’s “Sinnerman” short program at the 2021 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Las Vegas on Saturday knows how mesmerizing figure skating can be, when a gifted skater teams up with a talented choreographer (in this case, Rohene Ward) who selects just the right material.
They also know how unforgiving the scoring system is, for while Brown’s performance was clean and packed with finesse, he sits a distant third in the standings, well behind Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou, who also had superb outings.
The reason is simple: Brown didn’t do a quadruple jump, while his younger competitors each did two.