Moment of Truth

Full Text COPYRIGHT Maclean Hunter Ltd. (Canada) 1992

He arrived for the Olympics insisting that he was ready to compete, brushing off questions about his injured back and enforced three-month absence from competition. But moments after figure skater Kurt Browning took to the ice, it was apparent that he could not back up his brave words. He slipped and slid, missed jumps and ended up with disappointment painted plainly on his face. Instead of the gold that he had hoped to take home to Canada, Browning ended up with a humiliating sixth-place finish. And after it was over, he had no doubt about the reason. Unable to compete since November because of a back injury, he said, he simply was not prepared. "If I'd had two more weeks, I would have been in this thing," he added ruefully.

The 25-year-old Browning had been Canada's biggest hope for gold--a three-time world champion gunning for his greatest honor. His disastrous showing came in a competition marred by controversy over the judges' scoring. Ukrainian Victor Petrenko won gold despite a mediocre performance, while American skater Paul Wylie skated flawlessly yet ended up second, ahead of Czechoslovakian Petr Barna. But it was 19-year-old Canadian Elvis Stojko who was the prime victim of what many experts described as bizarre judging. While higher-rated skaters were taking pratfalls, Stojko skated cleanly and confidently, but dropped to seventh place from sixth at the midpoint of the Games.

Hunting: For Browning, it was a long way to the Olympic Ice Hall in Albertville from his skating origins in tiny Caroline, Alta. His father, 69-year-old Arnold (Dewey) Browning, a retired hunting guide who was in Albertville last week with his wife, Neba, acknowledged that "if someone had said you're training a world champion, we'd have looked at him like he'd fallen out of a tree."

But despite all Kurt Browning's accomplishments, there were signs that his injury-forced layoff and Canadians' intense expectations had taken their toll. Just a few days before leaving Edmonton, Browning made a significant change to his two-minute, 40-second short program, substituting a more difficult triple Lutz jump for an easier triple flip to impress the judges. Many experts second-guessed that gamble, and some wondered whether Browning was becoming distracted by the glamor of the Olympics. After he showed up at a Canadian hockey game on Monday, they questioned whether he was completely focused on his event. And when Browning's moment of truth arrived on Thursday night, he missed a triple Axel and fell heavily to the ice--problems that persisted on the fateful Saturday.

The pressure of the Games also affected Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, gold-medal contenders in the pairs competition. Going into the event, they were ranked second in the world, dazzling audiences with manoeuvres that only they perform. In one move, their trademark triple lateral twist, the 28-year-old Eisler, from Seaforth, Ont., throws his tiny 95-lb. partner as high as 12-feet in the air while she spins three times. Both skaters are fiercely competitive: they even ended a personal relationship about two years ago and agreed not to date other people in order to concentrate entirely on skating.

Fall: But their troubles started early in their short program. Brasseur, 21, of Boucherville, Que., failed to complete the side-by-side double Axel jumps and fell to the ice. "The first thing that passed through my mind was, 'God, what have I done?" she said later. "The second thing was, 'We've got to keep going.' I said, 'I'm sorry,' and I remember Lloyd telling me, 'Smile, don't quit.'" But the fall cost them heavily, and in the long program two days later Brasseur stumbled three times. The quality of their athletic lifts, however, was enough to win them the bronze--Canada's first medal in the pairs event since 1964. Their archrivals, Artur Dmitriev and Natalia Mishkuteniok of the Unified Team, captured the gold with a near-flawless performance.

The Canadians' disappointment was palpable. "It's hard for us to hold our heads high the way we skated," Eisler said. "We did get a medal, but we didn't skate well. It doesn't leave a good feeling." He added: "I wish I could wake up. If it was a dream I could go out and skate again." Unfortunately for Eisler and Brasseur, as well as for Browning, it was hard reality--and their dreams of striking gold in Albertville had been dashed.