For a while, Kyle Brown wondered if he had already reached the finish line.
After narrowly missing a chance to represent his country on the United States skeleton team in the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the 29-year-old Concord High graduate contemplated calling it a career.
“It was a pretty tough moment, not being named to the Olympic team,” Brown said Monday. “I didn’t know if I was going to come back to this sport.”
Brown confided in the people he trusts most – family, friends and teammates – before coming to a conclusion: He’s not done yet.
“I just kind of felt like I had something more to give,” Brown said. “I just felt like I didn’t reach my full potential, and I still had a lot more to go.”
It didn’t take long to prove that theory correct.
Brown emerged from team time trials as the USA-1 – which means the country’s top slider in the skeleton – and will lead the team into the World Cup starting in Sigulda, Latvia, on Dec. 9. The World Cup schedule also includes stops in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States and Canada.
Since being a part of the Concord Crimson Tide’s football, ice hockey and track and field teams, it’s taken immeasurable drive and support, along with a bit of happenstance, for Brown to find himself as the country’s best skeleton athlete.
Those were the words Brown said he muttered when his strength coach at Springfield College told him that they’d like him to attend a combine for the sport, which entails sprinting with 75-pound sleds for at least 30 meters before sliding head-first down an icy track and at speeds that would get a car pulled over on the highway.
Clueless about the sport, Brown turned to the internet.
“I YouTubed it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this could be pretty darn cool,’ ” he said.
He told the federation he wanted to finish his degree, but would come out the following summer.
“Honestly it was probably the first slide down that I fell in love with it,” Brown said. “It really brings you back to childhood memories of going sledding in the backyard or a local hill. I fell in love with it immediately.”
Brown says a good start – or a push – is essential in the sport. Through the years, it’s an aspect he’s improved on with strength and mobility training.
“It’s a very interesting start where we’re sprinting for about 30 to 50 meters or so, depending on the track, and we’re running at very high speeds, bent over, pushing a sled,” Brown explained. “We’re bent over with our hands about 5 inches off the ice. In the men’s field right now, if you’re not one of the top 10 pushers in the world, you’ll be struggling to have top 10 finishes. That’s something that I definitely rely heavily on.”
The untrained eye might not know the difference between a good and bad performance. Every fraction of a second is imperative, and subtle techniques keep sliders on an optimal path.
“That’s the hard part about the sport. It’s really difficult to see those little microscopic things that add up. … You’ll see World Cup athletes and it looks like they’re just laying there, and that’s just because they’re so smooth and they’re relaxed in what they’re doing,” Brown said. “We don’t have engines. We don’t have a gas pedal. It’s all gravity and how we manipulate each pressure in the curves is how we can accelerate.”
When Brown decided he would return to skeleton, that wasn’t the only commitment he was intent on making. Due to it being a self-funded sport without much government funding, Brown has sometimes struggled to stay afloat financially and he admitted to being guilty of putting too much pressure on himself to be perfect on the sled. Through the ups and downs that come with chasing an elite level of an untraditional sport, Larissa Makris, his girlfriend of more than a decade, had been with him every step of the way.
“As much as we felt we were engaged for the last 10 years or so, we never were. One of the first things I did this offseason was propose to her,” Brown said before reflecting on what her support has meant to his career. “I don’t know how she does it. It takes a really strong woman to say goodbye to somebody she loves for months on end and be able to hold down the fort at home. But she supports me in everything that I do, and I support her in everything that she does.
“She’s a second-grade teacher in Concord, so she’s probably more popular in the community than I am, because she’s a really talented teacher,” Brown said with a chuckle.
With a wedding set for August, Brown feels content. He’s not as nervous about his results, and that has translated to faster times.
“When you really break it down, I’m just racing a clock. I was too worried about too many other things, other people, how I was performing and how my friends and family back home would see my performances,” Brown admitted. “The constant pressure I would put on myself, I believe didn’t make me the slider that I really was. This year, kind of coming in and just sliding to have fun and trusting my ability as a slider was instrumental in my early success so far.”
Brown fondly looks back on his time at Concord High, and credits his three-sport background to helping him transition to skeleton.
He still lives in Concord and works as a personal trainer and coach.
“A lot of people will stay and train at the Olympic training center, which our federation offers to us, but there’s something about being home and being in Concord that I have done since I started the sport,” Brown said. “I wanted to be in my community, I wanted to train in my community and I wanted to work in my community. Because I think definitely without some of the people around here, I wouldn’t be where I am.”
Donations and participation in fundraising events have made chasing his dream possible. Even when he’s across the pond, he can feel Concord behind him.
“Just the constant support on social media, people getting up at 3 a.m. to watch races online and stuff like that.” Brown said. “The community of Concord is so tight and anything I can do to give back to them is what I want to do.”
Brown actually finished second in the standings after the three races at time trials in Lake Placid, N.Y., but in a proverbial passing of the torch, 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Matthew Antoine decided to retire and try coaching despite being in line for the USA-1 position.
“He’s been sliding for 16 years and he decided he couldn’t find that fire anymore,” Browns said. “We were battling neck-and-neck.”
When Brown was called up to the World Cup team, Antoine was one of the top racers in the world.
“Matt is one of the guys when I first got in the sport that I really looked up to. Being able to watch how he performs and how he goes about his business, I take a lot from him,” Brown said. “He’s a really good friend of mine.”
After trials were complete, Brown, exhausted and overwhelmed, let it all out.
“I got back to the top and my mom and Larissa, they were there, and my mom was hugging me and she was so happy and Larissa was happy, and I just started crying,” Brown said. “I had to just walk away and I sat alone for 10 minutes. It was all of these emotions coming down at once.
“To come back and not only to perform well, but to win the trials and be USA-1, it caught me off-guard for sure. It was an emotional time. It goes to prove why I came back. I felt like I had something left in the tank and I knew that I hadn’t reached my full potential, and this proves it.”
And despite his success so far, he knows there’s a long way to the finish line.
“We still have another full three years to go, but this is a great first step. The long-term goal is obviously to make the 2022 Olympics, and this is a really good way to start off,” Brown said. “I’m really excited for what the future holds.”
(Jason Orfao can be reached at jorfao@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JasonOrfao.)