With 2020 worlds definitively gone, skaters like Jason Brown try to stay on peak while off ice in uncertain times

Jason Brown reprising his landmark “Riverdance” program at his family’s home.

Thursday’s unsurprising news that the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships were definitively cancelled had minimal impact on Rafael Arutunian.

The impact of having little else definitive about figure skating’s future schedule is what Arutunian struggles to deal with.

“We knew this is what would be done with worlds,” said Arutunian, coach of two-time reigning world champion Nathan Chen, via telephone from California. “What happens now with next season?”

The International Skating Union’s governing council hopes to provide some clarity about that after it meets again by conference call April 28.  Even then, though, most of its answers will have to be prefaced by a literal or understood “if,” since there remains little certainty about the further development of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequent effect on the world of sport.

When Quebec health authorities said March 11 that the 2020 worlds in Montreal could not take place as planned March 18-22, the ISU left open the possibility of rescheduling the event for early this autumn.

The ISU Council decided in a Thursday conference call that such a possibility no longer was viable, meaning this will be the first season without a World Championships since the 1961 worlds was cancelled in the aftermath of the plane crash that killed the entire U.S. team and coaches en route to the event.

“It’s disappointing, but due to the uncertainty of the situation, it’s the right decision,” Chen said of the 2020 worlds cancellation, in a statement provided by IMG, his management company.

The first ISU event of the 2020-21 season is to be the opener of the Junior Grand Prix Series Aug, 26-29 in British Columbia.  The first ISU Challenger Series event is to be the Autumn Classic Sept. 17-19 in Ontario.  The senior Grand Prix Series is to begin Oct. 23-25 at Skate America in Las Vegas.

Yet the ice rinks in most of the world’s leading figure skating countries already have been closed nearly a month for health reasons, meaning skaters are limited to off-ice training at home.

Said Arutunian, only half in jest:  “You need to be on the ice once a day to not forget how to skate.”

“How can you make plans,“ he added, “if we don’t know when we will be able to get back on the ice?”

The ISU hopes to preserve as much of the fall schedule as possible, even if it means moving back the dates of events.  Both Grand Prix series, which have an invitation process, will take precedence over the Challenger Series.

Jason Brown would have been competing in a fourth senior worlds in Montreal. Brown estimated if he kept his conditioning at a “fit, peak form,” he could get back into “fighting shape to compete at a high level” if he was back on the ice eight weeks before a competition.

“The big difference is if you know your timeline,” Brown said via telephone Thursday afternoon from his family’s home in Highland Park. Ill.  “Then you can work through a plan based on a time limit.  The hard part is trying to do it when you don’t know what you are aiming for.”

Brown said he never has been off the ice longer than six weeks, and he now has been off a little more than four weeks.  At age 25, with experience coming back from being sidelined by injuries, Brown feels prepared to deal with a longer layoff from skating.

“The first time I was injured, I was terrified I wouldn’t get my jumps back,” Brown said.  “Now I would be more relaxed about the situation.

“It’s all experimental at this point.  I’m trying to figure it out.”

We were talking during a 30-minute break between his Zoom workouts.  First was an hour-long dance class.  Then came a full-body workout for 45 minutes, an hour of cardio endurance drills on an elliptical trainer and finally another hour of general work – an aggregate of nearly four hours.

Brown has found it necessary to increase the amount of work off the ice to make up for the on-ice training (about 2 ½ hours a day) that he realized had been an even more important part of his conditioning than he thought.  When skating, his off-ice work lasts about three hours a day.

“Before, I was supplementing with off ice, and now I’m substituting it for on ice,” he said.

Young Russians (l. to r.) Anna Shcherbakova, Alena Kostornaia and Alexandra Trusova, who swept the podium at the 2020 European Championships, may be changed skaters by next season. (Getty Images.)

Brown said he expects time constraints will lead many skaters to bring back last season’s programs.  But when he mentioned that to his coach, Tracy Wilson, she did not want to rule out the idea of new options until knowing the time parameters for next season.

Arutunian wondered how time away from the ice might affect the three Russian young women who had a chance for a medal sweep at the 2020 worlds.

Alexandra Trusova, 15, and Anna Shcherbakova and Alena Kostornaia, both 16, all are at an age when female bodies often begin to mature, and such development often is delayed by consistent, hard physical training.  A different morphology and different center of gravity can have a dramatic effect on jump consistency.

“If you’re not keeping the same pressure on your body, it will start to change,” Arutunian said.  “It’s very hard psychologically to maintain the same intensity of practice if you have no goal.

“We know these three girls are tough.  Now we will find out how tough they are.”

There also is the question of whether all three will automatically keep their places for the 2021 World Championships next March in Stockholm.  Such team selection is the purview of each national federation.

Entry numbers for each country are determined by the results of the previous worlds.  The ISU has yet to begin discussions on whether the 2020 worlds entry numbers, determined in 2019, will remain the same for 2021, when the results determine entry numbers for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Amidst all that uncertainty, Brown and nearly two dozen more of the world’s greatest skaters, past and present, are taking part Friday night (8 pm. Eastern) in “Blades For the Brave,” a benefit webcast for Americares.  All the proceeds will go to Americares’ Covid 19 response, especially to provide needed equipment for health care workers.

Brown and his 2014 Olympic teammate, Gracie Gold, will co-host the event, to include socially distanced performances of various types by Michelle Kwan, Brian Boitano, Tara Lipinski, Scott Hamilton, Johnny Weir, Nancy Kerrigan, Sasha Cohen, Evgeny Plushenko, Kurt Browning, Viktor Petrenko and Ekaterina Gordeeva. 

“During a time like this, it’s important for everyone to know that they aren’t alone,” Brown told TeamUSA.org.