Stong: Successful Figure Skaters Let Talent Do Their Talking

Louis Stong says Kurt Browning got to be four-time men's world figure skating champion by keeping his ears open and his mouth shut.

In other words, listen to advice and let your talent do the talking. Stong should know. He was Browning's coach the last two years of his amateur career and also coaches top-ranked female skater Josee Chouinard.

Browning turned professional just after the recent Lillehammer Winter Olympics.

How coachable is he?

Extraordinarily so," said Stong. He's like a sponge. I think probably he would be a sponge no matter who it was if he felt that someone had something to give him. If it's something he could learn from, he would sponge it. He has an extraordinary mind."

Stong, who's been coaching for 33 years, was anxious to fine-tune Browning's skating.

"He always, always amazed me. I saw a lot of technical things I could change and some of them profound, including just the way he held his body. We changed some things in jumping and certainly the exposure to different music, different themes, more the total package kind of thing. Like when he did his Casablance, he took on a persona. He just latched on to that and after that it was like - poof!"

Although Browning failed to win an Olympic gold medal - he fell and finished fifth - his Canadian fans rounded up enough gold to present him with a medal measuring six inches across and weighing 2.9 pounds. Browning, upon accepting the keepsake Friday in Halifax, donated $5,000 to Muscular Dystrophy of Canada.

"Certainly the thought behind it was fabulous," Stong said of the gold rush. "I think he has always been beloved and, perhaps, the vulnerability that he exposed after the short program in the Olympics made him even more beloved. Before he skated the long program, he received 2,000 faxes from fans in Canada."