Honestly, the world of competitive figure skating is usually a "start at age four or get out" kind of deal. Most kids are doing double axels before they hit middle school. Spencer Lane didn't care about that. At all. He didn't even put on a pair of real figure skates until he was 12 or 13. Most people would say that’s way too late to ever be anything more than a hobbyist. They’d be wrong.
Spencer was a force. A literal "force of nature," according to his dad, Doug Lane. He wasn't just some kid who liked to glide around the pond. He was a 16-year-old from Barrington, Rhode Island, who decided he wanted the Olympics and then just... went for it. He basically bypassed the decade of slow-burn training most skaters endure and rocketed to the top of the sport in about three years. It was wild to watch.
The Meteoric Rise of an "Underdog"
In January 2022, Spencer was just a kid in rental skates at an outdoor rink in Providence. He’d watched the 2022 Winter Olympics and got hooked. Most teenagers find a new hobby and drop it in six weeks. Not Spencer. He saw a local skater named Patrick Blackwell—who would later become one of his best friends—and decided that was going to be him.
He started in "Learn to Skate" classes. By July 2022, he was competing at the "No Test" level.
He won.
Granted, he was the only one in his flight, but he didn't care. He was on the podium. From there, the trajectory was basically vertical. He moved from Warwick Figure Skaters to the prestigious Skating Club of Boston. This is where the heavy hitters train. He was working with coaches like Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were 1994 World Champions. They usually don't take on "late starters." But Spencer had something you can't really teach: raw, terrifying athletic courage.
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Spencer’s Competition Stats (The Short Version)
- 2022 Ocean State Open: 1st Place (No Test)
- 2024 North Shore Open: 1st Place (Intermediate Men)
- 2024 Providence Open: 1st Place (Intermediate Men)
- 2025 Eastern Sectionals: Gold Medalist (Intermediate Men)
He wasn't just winning; he was landing jumps that skaters with eight years of experience were still struggling with. By late 2024, he was consistently hitting triple toeloops. His personal best score hit 71.49 in his free skate. If you know skating, you know that for someone who had only been on the ice for three seasons, that score is borderline impossible.
What Most People Get Wrong About Late Starters
There's this myth that if you don't have the "skating legs" by puberty, you'll never have the edge control or the muscle memory for high-level triples. Spencer basically spat on that idea. He used his background in parkour and aerial silks to understand how his body moved in the air.
He was obsessive.
His dad talked about how he’d spend hours on TikTok (where he had a huge following under the handle "SpencerSkates") documenting every fall. And there were a lot of them. He’d slam into the ice, get up, and do it again. Most skaters are taught to be cautious to avoid injury. Spencer was the opposite. He’d skip the "foundation" stuff if you let him, just to try a jump he wasn't ready for yet. It was messy, it was loud, and it worked.
In November 2024, he qualified for the U.S. Figure Skating National Development Camp. This was his "I've arrived" moment. He had officially transitioned from a "kid who started late" to one of the top developmental prospects in the entire country.
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The Tragedy That Shook the Skating World
On January 29, 2025, the skating community lost its heart.
Spencer and his mother, Christine Lane, were flying home from that very development camp in Wichita, Kansas. Their flight, an American Eagle CRJ-700, was involved in a mid-air collision with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C.
There were no survivors.
It wasn't just Spencer. The crash claimed the lives of several members of the Skating Club of Boston, including his coaches, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, and fellow young skater Jinna Han. It was the kind of tragedy that stops a sport in its tracks. One minute, Spencer is posting a "haunting" Instagram story of the plane wing with the caption "ICT -> DCA," and the next, the rinks in Boston and Rhode Island are silent.
A Legacy That Actually Matters
It’s easy to focus on the "what ifs." What if he’d landed that quad? What if he’d made it to the 2030 Olympics?
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But that misses the point of who Spencer was. He was a South Korean adoptee who found his identity on the ice. He was a kid who didn't let "rules" about age or experience stop him.
In early 2026, his friend Patrick Blackwell competed at the U.S. Championships with a tribute program. He used music called "Autumn Moon," which was actually part of the program Spencer was supposed to debut that season. Seeing a gold medalist skate to your music? That’s a legacy.
How to Apply the "Spencer Mindset"
If you're looking at Spencer Lane’s life and wondering what to take from it, it’s not just about skating. It’s about the refusal to be realistic.
- Stop waiting for the "right" time. If you want to learn a skill that "takes a decade," start today. You might not have a decade. Spencer didn't, but he packed ten years of progress into three.
- Document the struggle. Spencer’s TikTok wasn't a highlight reel; it was a "fall reel." People connect with the effort, not just the medal.
- Find your "Blackwell." Find someone who inspires you, then work until you're standing right next to them on the ice.
- Listen to the pros, but keep your fire. He trusted his coaches, but he never lost that "crazy kid" energy that made him jump higher than everyone else.
The Skating Club of Boston now has the "Always Champions" campaign, raising money for scholarships and a memorial for those lost on Flight 5342. If you want to honor Spencer, the best way is probably to go to a public skate, put on some rental skates, and try something that scares you. He definitely would have.
If you’re interested in supporting the next generation of skaters who, like Spencer, are coming into the sport from non-traditional backgrounds, you can look into the Skating Club of Boston’s memorial fund. They focus on ensuring that the "force of nature" spirit Spencer brought to the rink stays alive in the kids training there today.