Oct. 25--Max Aaron did his best to save men's figure skating from itself Saturday night.
And he also took a big step toward saving a career that had plunged as far as some of the necklines on his rivals' costumes.
Amidst men wearing things that ran the frippery gamut from feathers to frills to countless sequins, among athletes who fell, clunked about and treated their music like Muzak, the 23-year-old Aaron came out in a plain black shirt and black pants, went about the business of skating with a simple, powerful elegance and added two noteworthy lines to a career resume that had few significant additions since he was surprise winner of the U.S. title in 2013.
With a program still highlighted but not solely defined by its jumps, including two clean quads, Aaron became the first U.S. man to win Skate America since Evan Lysacek in 2009 and thereby earned the first Grand Prix victory in his five appearances on the circuit.
"I want this to kind of steamroll," he said. "I want this to be the start of many things."
Although he lost the free skate to a rising Japanese star, 17-year-old Shoma Uno, whose costume was a garish green and glittery, Aaron finished 1.52 points ahead in the overall standings. Jason Brown, replete in sparkles, worked his way from eighth after the short program to third overall mainly because several skaters who were ahead of him had disastrous long programs.
Aaron's attempt at interpreting the "Black Swan" sound track looked labored at times. But his insistence on working the performance aspect of his skating clearly has made a difference in the way he feels about himself and has also had a positive effect on the confidence in his jumping, once the only thing he cared about. His component scores in the free skate were third best of the 12 men.
He finally has understood that training just the jumps was earning him nothing but frustration.
"I was tired of getting last or seventh, tired of falling multiple times in a program, tired of competing differently than how I trained," Aaron said. "So I took a step back, and we changed some things.
"Some days it's tough, where I don't want to train my mental game as hard as I (need) or my components as hard, but at the end of the day, I can just go back to getting sixth and seventh place and being a mediocre skater or (try) to be a champion. I want to do whatever it takes to be the best."
Aaron made no mistakes until slipping on his final jump, a double axel, when he allowed himself to lose focus by thinking about how well the rest of the program had gone.
Brown's gossamer skating in a long program with a clear sense of emotional unity was undone by his jumping mistakes: fall on an under rotated quad, downgraded triple axel, under rotated triple toe.
The reigning U.S. champion from Highland Park is 0-for-3 on career quad attempts and has had clean landings on just two of six triple axels this season.
"What it is all about (with the quad) right now is attacking it," Brown said. "I feel I attacked it, I didn't pull back."
Brown admitted the emphasis on trying to master the quad is affecting his triple axel, a jump it had taken him nearly three years to master but has been decidedly erratic the past two seasons,
"It's that give and take," he said. "I'm learning a new jump, so you put more of your focus on that."
