Varieties of special Jordan algebras of almost polynomial growth

Let J be a special Jordan algebra and let cn(J) be its corresponding codimension sequence. The aim of this paper is to prove that in case J is finite dimensional, such a sequence is polynomially bounded if and only if the variety generated by J does not contain UJ2, the special Jordan algebra of 2×2 upper triangular matrices. As an immediate consequence, we prove that UJ2 is the only finite dimensional special Jordan algebra that generates a variety of almost polynomial growth.