'I don't see the ceiling closing in on her anytime soon'
Canada's Breken Brezden is still discovering just how good she can be, and she's aiming to keep the trajectory of her skating pointed upward into a new season
It’s been said many times that a little bit of kindness can go a long way. In the case of Breken Brezden, about 2,300 kilometres, give or take a few.
That’s roughly the distance between her tiny hometown of Dauphin, Man., population around 8,400, and the city in which she now lives and trains, Hamilton, Ont., about an hour west of Toronto, which is home to just under 600,000 people. It was a connection between coach and skater more than five years ago that was the starting point to making it all happen.
As Jen Jackson tells it, the Hamilton Skating Club coach was at a competition during the 2019-20 season, and saw Brezden have not exactly her best day on the ice. The young teenager was clearly upset with what had happened, but Jackson knew better about her — she’d watched Brezden practise and noticed a certain level of talent that she didn’t want to see crushed by one bad day.
“She had some talent and she just had a little bit of a rough skate and was upset and I just asked her coach (Patti Hole of Skate Virden in Manitoba), do you mind if I talk to her?” she recalled. “And I just basically told her, you know you’re a really good skater. Just go back home and work and try again next year, you’ll be fine.”
Brezden remembers it this way: “I skated pretty terribly, but she I guess saw me on practices or warm-ups kind of thing and she recognized some kind of ability that I had. So after I was walking out to see my parents, crying and upset about my unfortunate skate, she came up to me and kind of assured me and give me a hug.
“That experience was incredibly encouraging! Motivating to learn that someone I didn’t even know believed in me and saw potential in my skating.”
While “next year” didn’t exactly happen — the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered rinks across Canada, being the cause of that — the connection between Brezden and Jackson continued to grow via video classes on Zoom (something that Hole had asked Jackson if she had available for her skater). Brezden’s mother, Jennifer Andrews, has family in the Hamilton area, across the harbour in Burlington, and at Christmas time in 2021, she spent some hours training at HSC’s home rink, the Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena and Skating Centre. That led to a decision to spend a few more months there in the summer of 2022.
It was at that point that Brezden began to realize that all the amenities of a big city club were helping her improve more rapidly. It was an intoxicating feeling. By the fall, she was taking Grade 12 classes online while training under the direction of Jackson and Bryce Davison, the former Canadian champion and World medallist in pairs, who is also HSC’s Director of Skating. A year later, she enrolled at McMaster University — her mother’s alma mater — and became a full-time resident of the city known locally as “Steeltown.”
“I had trained the entire summer in Hamilton (in 2022) and then I decided I knew it was right. I could just feel it,” the 19-year-old Brezden says now. “I knew it was right that I needed to stay to continue that trajectory of improvement for the 2022-23 season. I did online courses for my high school while staying in Hamilton and training in Hamilton and it definitely paid off because that was the first year that I qualified for nationals as a junior (she finished seventh at 2023 Canadians in Oshawa, Ont.).”
Ask Brezden how much her university choice had to do with the move and she’ll say the two things “kind of go hand in hand.”
“Maybe skating a little bit more, but you know I’d always thought about my mom going to McMaster. So growing up, that’s like the one and only Ontario university I’d ever even heard of,” she said. “It’s an idea that I had in the back of my mind, that my mom went there and that’s great, but training in Hamilton is definitely one of the first things I thought about when I was like, I want to move here. The environment for me just was working out really, really well. It was paying off and paying off pretty quickly.”
While Brezden will always stay true to her Manitoba roots — she still represents Skate Dauphin, where she took her first steps on the ice under the guidance of coach Donna Kemp-Drysdale at four years old (“my dad was a hockey player, so he had me on skates pretty early”) — the time had come for her to seize greater opportunity. She had spent about eight years in Virden, with her “skate chauffeur” dad Brian making the five-hour return drive multiple times a week to get her regular training.
“I would say being in Virden was perfect for that time in my life, but it definitely did come with its challenges because it took us like 2 1/2 hours to drive to Virden because my hometown is quite a ways away,” she said. “So the difference in being able to have that convenience of the rink only being 15 minutes away now … it’s really great.
“And also in Virden, the ice often gets taken out as soon as the hockey teams are done so we had to go to other towns or sometimes we could go to a Saskatchewan arena (in Yorkton) to continue to skate. So not having to worry about that issue is definitely a big bonus here and overall, Hamilton’s really great with its off-ice programs and the amount of hours that I can choose from to skate, so it really works with my university schedule because my skating schedule can be super flexible as well.”
It was also simply a case of a talented skater outgrowing her surroundings, a story that has been repeated hundreds or even thousands of times over the years. While Brezden’s talent level still outshines pretty much everyone in Hamilton, Jackson points out that it isn’t necessarily by leaps and bounds.
“You’re in a little place and she was by far the best skater. Even at our club, she’s still our top skater, but there’s lots of younger kids that can do some of the things she can do and so there’s just a better pace, I would say, for her,” said Jackson. “She had good coaching in Manitoba, it wasn’t that her coaching was lacking, but she was like a big fish in a little pond. Her parents would drive five hours round trip just to get a lesson from her coach and they were doing a lot of time on the road.
“Being in Hamilton, she can come in and skate two to three hours before she goes to school. She can come in after school and skate another three or four hours. There’s always ballet and fitness and we have things implemented in our program so she doesn’t have to run around looking for a ballet teacher; we have one that comes in. Bryce does all their fitness and he’s excellent. He does it all himself as well. And then she has jump classes and yoga and a physiotherapist that comes into the rink. Just all the amenities she didn’t have at home makes a big difference.”
And Jackson surely knew, all the way back to their very first encounter all those years ago, that Brezden was bringing a pretty high level of talent into her club. It was noticeable to her to first time she cast eyes on Brezden.
“You know what, she had a really good glide on the ice; you could just see that she had a really nice flow to her skating,” Jackson said of the first time she saw Brezden. “She had a really great presentation. She looked like she was smiling and having fun when she was on the ice and I could see that some of the jumps were developing in the right direction. She was starting to do some triples and they weren’t bad. She wasn’t hitting them all the time, but you could see that she had the right idea.”
Not that it’s been all smooth sailing since her big move. Take the 2023-24 season, which became a huge pain for Brezden (literally). Early in the season, she suffered what Jackson called “the worst fall you can imagine” in practice and suffered a severe hip injury that kept her off the ice for two months. After she’d overcome that and qualified for 2024 nationals, she sprained an ankle days before that event in Calgary. Predictably, it didn’t go well — Brezden finished 18th in a field of 18.
“It was just a big mess,” Jackson said in describing Brezden’s situation. “Then she just came home, healed up and started training (in May) and last season, she just was injury free, so that was makes a big difference.”
Said Brezden: “It was quite a challenge to come back after repeated injuries or have to take a month off and then come back and try to get yourself into competition form again.”
But all of that was a distant memory by the summer of 2024, when Brezden brought home medals (two of them gold) from competitions during those hot months. While all of that went a long way toward rebuilding her confidence, it also did something else rather significant. Skate Canada was so impressed by her efforts (and the scores she was producing) that it rewarded Brezden with her first international assignment — the Trophee Metropole Nice Cote d’Azur, a Challenger Series event in October in France.
It was quite the experience, to say the least.
“It was pretty amazing. I feel like earning that opportunity really was just a sign of OK, I’m doing well and I’m actually being recognized for it and it’s just proof that the hard work in training that I’ve been putting in (is paying off),” said Brezden. “So it’s pretty awesome to be able to get that experience under my belt. There were some challenges, but I was able to face them and my short program wasn’t the best in France, but I was able to prove to myself that OK, I can really buckle down and get a free program done.”
Now, about that short program. While resurfacing the ice, the Zamboni driver accidentally melted two holes right down to the concrete when hot water leaked onto the ice. Skaters were given two choices: we’ll put pylons over the holes and you can work around that, or we’ll cancel the event. The show, as the old saying goes, did go on, but with a rather obvious, unplanned obstacle to conquer.
“We had to flip the program which now she knows it’s not a big deal but at the time, it was like well, now you’re not performing to the judges, you’re performing to the other side (of the rink),” said Jackson. “So she made a big mistake in the short by not doing the triple Lutz at all. I think she might’ve even doubled it and then did a fifth place long, she moved up quite a bit (from 20th after the short to 10th overall). So I think at the end of that, she just felt really good about herself for doing such a good long and then realized that sometimes stuff happens.”
The bigger bonus was this: thanks to that bounce-back free skate, Brezden achieved the qualifying technical score for the Four Continents Championships. And impressed Skate Canada’s national team boss, too.
“That was a big deal because it was not a great short. She had done much better shorts and that was rough and then to come back the next day and just leave it in the past and move forward was good,” said Jackson. “I think we were sitting in the kiss and cry and (Skate Canada high performance director) Mike Slipchuk sent her a text, ‘That was great. Glad you bounced back and did that.’ So she left feeling really good about herself.”
And maybe it put a thought in Brezden’s head about a new goal for the coming season.
“It was definitely super exciting to hear that and definitely an achievement that maybe I wasn’t really expecting to even get at the beginning of my season,” said Brezden of getting that qualifying score. “Four Continents would be an amazing competition (for me), so it’s definitely something that I could see in my future. It would be amazing.”
Much as all of that was exciting, the true of highlight of Brezden’s season came three months later in Laval, Que., when she placed fifth in the senior women’s event at 2026 Canadian nationals. Not only was it a mighty leap of 13 spots over her placement a year earlier, it was a massive shot of confidence (her 172.66 overall score was nearly 60 points higher than in Calgary. Yeah, being healthy makes just a bit of difference, right?).
“It was great to come to that realization that when I’m performing well, that I can kind of hold my own against our top ladies in Canada, so that’s something I’m really proud of. Being able to showcase that this season and performing in Laval was awesome,” she said. “I thought the energy was the best I’ve probably ever experienced at a competition so far and the crowd was super supportive. Just having that final competition of my season being a pretty great one … I would say obviously there’s still some mistakes that I made and still lots of things that I can improve but overall, I have a very positive outlook about that competition.”
Brezden had an extra treat awaiting her when she watched a replay of her performance of her long program, set to the beautifully soft melody of the theme from “Somewhere in Time,” by John Barry, and heard these thoughts from 2018 World champion Kaetlyn Osmond on the Skate Canada stream:
“A truly lovely performance by Breken. I love her skating so much. She’s always so delightful, the soft smile on her face throughout. But it looks effortless. It’s just a joy. I stopped taking notes and just enjoyed the moment of being able to watch her.”
(You’ll find more of that here after her short program).
Osmond, you should know, is Brezden’s biggest skating idol. So yeah, she was plenty giddy when she heard all of that (and yes, she’s listened to it again … and again … and again some more).
“It’s definitely a crazy experience to know that a person that I’ve idolized since I was younger and I’ve seen at the Olympics has such high praise and such positive comments for me in skating, so it was pretty awesome to hear,” said Brezden. “She’s an amazing performer, amazing jumper, amazing spinner, very balanced. I love watching her. I’ve definitely watched her programs like thousands of times.”
(Brezden also lists Russia’s Alena Kostornaia and two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan as huge favourites of hers. “I think if his free program at 2017 Worlds has like 100,000 views, I’d have at least 1,000 of them, so big fan of him as well”).
Jackson and Brezden have decided they will take “Somewhere in Time” into the Olympic season, and it’s a decision that puts a smile on her face.
“I love my long and I think it’s a pretty good fit for me and I think there’s still room for me to better my performance and my expression and my connection to the judges and the audience,” she said. “So I think there’s room to grow with it and I love the music. I think it’s a very beautiful piece so I’m fine with keeping it, too. I love my new short as well, so I’m excited to show them in competition.”
There’s a story behind her new short program, which will be skated to the The Carpenters’ classic hit “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Brezden says it’s an idea that came to Jackson while lying in bed at a competition.
“I think it was at Challenge or Skate Canada Trophy for the novice skaters, but she came up with it then, and then she sent it to me, and that was the only option we looked at,” said Brezden.
(in case you’re wondering … yes, Jackson acknowledges, they’re still waiting for music clearance. “We’re crossing our fingers,” she adds).
Both programs this season will include the triple Lutz-triple toe combination, the gold standard for the world’s top women. She’s added Biellman spins in each. There will be two triple flips in the long program. All of this being done to push Brezden closer to the podium at 2026 Canadians in Gatineau, Que., and to make her stand out more internationally, when the time comes.
“If she keeps up the way she is … she’s top five in Canada, so trying to hit the podium is definitely in her reach. I think it was pretty close this year to hitting the podium,” said Jackson. “We’ve just upped the ante a bit in the jumping to make things a little more difficult, but she’s doing everything the top three are doing and she just needs to keep getting experience and keep moving forward, but she already does a lot of stuff she needs to do. We’ve just got to keep making it better and more consistent.”
That will all start in July with a Skate Ontario Summer Series event in Ottawa. She’ll do another one in August in Waterloo, with a Quebec summer competition sandwiched in between. Brezden saw how much all the early activity helped benefited her last season, and knows the importance of getting started in the summer.
“It was really important (last summer) because it put me in front of the eyes of the people who make decisions and I was able to show them my consistency and my improvements from (the previous) year,” she said. “And so showing that over the course of a few competitions in the summer, I think it really helped seal the deal for me to be able to be sent to France, which was an amazing experience and I was super thankful for it.”
(let’s not forget, there is a third spot still open for a Canadian woman at Skate Canada International, one that somebody is going to have to earn on the ice. And Saskatoon is in the province next door to Manitoba. Just sayin’).
Brezden is also pretty excited about the other side of her life. She just wrote her final exam for a spring course she was taking at McMaster, and also learned she’s been accepted into the second year integrated rehab and humanities program that begins in the fall. She shares a student house with five friends in Westdale, a popular neighbourhood for McMaster students adjacent to the university. So yeah, life is good there, too.
“I love it and all my friends here, four of them I met first year and one of them, I actually skated with, so being able to stay with them, it’s been really fun.”
The specialized program she is going into is generally something that takes four years to complete but Brezden will be taking a reduced course load, to line up with her skating life. It’s a balance she’s managed to maintain so far.
“I’m trying to fit my university schedule around what’s going to be most convenient and most efficient with my skating schedule,” she explains. “I’ve done this kind of balance for two years now and I’m hoping I can keep it up.”
As for skating, she’s far from done yet. There are more goals to conquer, many more hours to spend improving and just loving what she does.
“I love skating. I love everything about it and I’d like to keep doing it for as long as I’m able to kind of thing,” she said. “As long as I’m still loving it, right? If it was my choice, it would be forever.
“Being able to continue to show my stuff at competitions and perform for everybody and hopefully, go to some more international competitions in the future, that would be amazing.”
The coach who noticed her bountiful talent several years back, and knew enough to remind her about it in one of Brezden’s lowest moments, surely knows there is still much more for her to give. And that her student has a thirst to keep digging out all that exists inside her.
“She wants to know what she needs to do to get better. She does not get offended, she does not take it personal (when she hears criticism),” said Jackson. “She wants to know what she needs to do and even if it doesn’t get done immediately, like it doesn’t correct right away, she keeps plugging away at it. She really does have a great attitude.
“We just keep building on what she has been doing the last few years and she just keeps getting better, so I don’t see the ceiling closing in on her anytime soon. She’s consistently getting better.”
Nice interview. I always enjoy watching her. Hope she gets that music clearance -- it must be so nerve-racking to wait!