Above: Lorenzo Elano displays his exquisite skating skills and grace at the 2025 U.S. Championships. Photo credit: Danielle Earl/U.S. Figure Skating
By Rachel Lutz
When Lorenzo Elano first heard his short program music, “I really did not like it at all,” the rising high school senior said in a recent interview about “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Misérables.
“Then, we made a little step sequence to it and I gave it a few more listens. I started liking it,” he said. “My coaches thought it was a little too mature for me. I do like performing it now. It fits me well.”
Denise Myers, a member of his coaching team along with Jeremy Allen and choreographer Tommy Steenberg, elaborated on what makes the program suitable for Elano.
“The plane crash in January was a turning point,” she said in a separate interview. “He was close to a lot of those kids. I think it holds even more meaning now than it did before.”
She went on to describe Elano as someone who has a lot of resilience and determination combined with a strong work ethic.
“He carries emotion like Jason Brown,” she said. “He skates with his heart, you can tell.”
Elano recently got to meet Brown, a two-time Olympian, and learn about his career and methods.
“He was talking about ways that he trains [for] his programs, how he gets his programs done, and the process behind his programs,” Elano recalled. “And he’s nice and funny! He was genuine and everything he said, I could tell that it takes all this work, time and effort.”
Elano said his mother and father, who emigrated from the Philippines and work as a registered nurse and in the Chicago public school system, respectively, also like to compare his skating to Brown’s.
“He has an amazing, supportive family,” Myers added. “When you look at the triangle of the athlete and the family and the coaching team, he’s got wonderful support.”
When he was younger, Elano tried many different activities in conjunction with his skating, including baseball, football and other sports. He even did ballet for a few years — but nothing stuck.
“My dad thought it was a good idea to enroll me in taekwondo,” he said. “It made me flexible, because they would stretch us out a lot. Personally, I did not enjoy taekwondo. I didn’t want to quit until I got my black belt. Once I got my black belt, I decided to focus on skating.”
Even though he doesn’t participate in taekwondo anymore, Elano said the lessons he learned still carry over into his skating.
“It helped me build early leg muscle, because it was just demanding with the whole body,” he said, adding that it also helped him build core strength and body awareness. “They taught us a lot about being disciplined about taekwondo and our bodies, and to take care of ourselves.”
That discipline has helped him make “steady progression” though the ranks of the U.S. junior men, Myers noted. After winning his first junior national title in January, he was awarded with a Junior Grand Prix Series assignment later this summer in Riga, Latvia.
“You can see the trajectory and the direction that he’s heading,” she said. “One day at a time. One practice at a time. You can have it all, you just can’t have it all right now.”
Elano is entering the season — and that first Junior Grand Prix assignment —with an open mind.
“I honestly have no expectations for myself. I’ll just show up and see what happens,” he said.
He’s got a similar mindset for his goals the rest of the season, including landing an elusive triple Axel for the first time.
“I’m hoping to see a clean triple Axel with positive GOE in either program — I don’t care which one! I’d be ecstatic for any,” he said.
He takes some triple Axel inspiration from World champion Alysa Liu. She not only won a senior national title the year after she won a junior national title — something Elano called “crazy” — but she did it with a clean triple Axel in both her programs. He enjoys watching her programs from that U.S. Championship on YouTube, as well as other skating videos and in-person competitions when he can.
But it’s the U.S. Championships he ultimately has his eyes on, where he will be competing among the senior men for the first time.
“I want to qualify to nationals so I can feel how the atmosphere is when there is so much pressure on the top senior men of our nation,” he said, aware of the weight of the Olympic season among the top echelon of skaters. “If I do end up going to nationals, there is no pressure for me. I’ll be there, enjoying the moment, living in the moment, while everyone else would most likely be stressing out.”
