COLORADO SPRINGS — Despite the deceiving appearance of having chosen to move to Colorado Springs, figure skater Brandon Mroz remains as much a St. Louis-area product as toasted ravioli.

Albeit for hockey, he was skating by age 4 at Wayne Kennedy Ice Rink on Wells Road and was in the Oakville school system. His father, Michael, is a downtown jeweler. The pre-competition play list on his Ipod features St. Louisan Nelly's song, "Number 1."

"Something that's going to get me going," he said after a practice last week.

The three people he'd most like to have dinner with include Albert Pujols … along with Jessica Alba and Megan Fox.

And if he makes the U.S. Olympic team for the Vancouver Games in February, keep an eye on him during the parade of nations in opening ceremonies.

"I'm definitely carrying a Cardinals flag and waving it behind the USA flag," he said, laughing.

Whether he literally carries it or not, though, Mroz, 18, is the best prospect for figuratively bearing the flag of St. Louis in Vancouver.

With a second-place finish in U.S. Nationals last winter in his first senior competition, his chances are as good as anyone, coach Tom Zakrajsek said. In some circles, his place seems almost assumed:

In June, his image was one of 88 featured in a full-page Team USA ad in USA Today bearing numerous past Olympians and others in contention.

"Really? I haven't seen that," Mroz said. "Wow."

Yet such anticipation, both from others and himself, is a blessing and a burden to Mroz, whose next major competition is SkateAmerica in Lake Placid on Friday and Saturday.

"It's great, but at the same time it can be, like, eerie in a sense to have that pressure to not only represent your country but yourself," he said. "I'm definitely coming to terms with it. I'm still doing my stuff even when I'm distracted by it."

Part of his processing mechanism comes in the regular flow of his life here, where he trains with the storied Broadmoor Skating Club. Banners in the World Arena training facility pay tribute to Hayes Allen Jenkins (1956 Olympic gold medalist), David Jenkins (1960) and Peggy Fleming (1968).

Whether for meals or workouts or fellowship, he also is a regular at the nearby Olympic Training Center.

"I'm passing those Olympic rings every day, and I put myself around Olympic athletes every day," he said. "The motto they have at the OTC is, 'It's not every four years, it's every day.'

"When you (handle it that way), the Olympics don't seem like the Olympics. It just kind of funnels down and makes the journey easier. It's all about the journey."

His journey to this precipice began with his parents plucking him out of hockey for being, in fact, too rambunctious.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, he felt set free in figure skating.

As he flourished in the sport, he traveled to Canada to train, then to Colorado Springs. He had difficulty reconciling continuing in the sport in 2005, after his mother, Cindy, and brother Spencer were in a severe car accident on their way home from visiting him.

Cindy Mroz suffered numerous internal injuries and required heart surgery. Her husband earlier this year described her recovery as "another miracle at Barnes" Hospital.

Spencer suffered a bruised spinal cord that essentially rendered him paralyzed from the waist down, though the family remains hopeful of a recovery and Michael Mroz said he can walk in a swimming pool.

But with the encouragement of family and friends, Brandon Mroz got over what he called a "grudge" against skating and earned a novice silver medal, as luck or fate would have it, in St. Louis as part of the 2006 U.S. championships.

Though Zakrajsek said last week that he wasn't surprised by Mroz's upward trajectory, Mroz startled the figure skating world by finishing second in his first senior event at the 2009 nationals in Cleveland.

He was the only men's competitor to skate two clean programs there, and he followed it by finishing ninth in the world championships in Los Angeles. (He was No. 2 among the U.S. skaters.)

All well and good, Zakrajsek said, but …

"He's kind of got to let go of all that, because it was a snapshot," he said. "All it is is one moment in time, and you can't live off your past."

But it's part of why Mroz is in an entirely different frame of mind than a year ago.

"I'm much more confident now," Mroz said. "I was almost at a fast-forward pace. I was learning but kind of had to perform at the same time."

Not that he's a finished product. After flubbing a quadruple jump in his short program, Mroz stood 11th in last month's Cup of Russia competition in Moscow. He rallied to finish fourth in the long and seventh overall.

In a sense, the event was a microcosm of what Mroz faces going forward.

"I think I was so far in the future (during the short program), it kind of ate at me a little bit; it was sort of like I was playing tug of war," he said, adding that for his free skate, "I was just kind of in the moment, one step at a time, and that completely, like, relaxed me."

While Mroz said he learned from the event, that doesn't mean he plans to change philosophies to dilute his program by abandoning the rare and daring maneuver of trying a quad in his short program. Even if Zakrajsek at times questions it, he appreciates Mroz's attitude.

Beginning with Skate America, he expects to refine and improve along the way to the U.S. championships, aka Olympic trials, in January in Spokane, Wash.

"If I do a short with a quad, you're put at a whole different standard," he said. "I don't want to just make an Olympic team; I want to get medals. That kind of program is what gets medals.

"I know that if I want to get on that Olympic team, maybe I might have to risk a little more just to have that security. I'd rather go for the gusto and hit it or miss and not make it rather than keeping it safe."

All in the spirit of St. Louis.