Browning Lacked 'Fire' at '94 Games.

THREE YEARS ago now, Kurt Browning seemed certain to win the 1994 Olympic figure skating championship for Canada. He'd been world titlist in four of the previous five seasons, missing out in 1992 because of persistent back miseries. Now the Winter Games schedule shifted and the next edition was only two years down the road, so he'd hung in for a second attempt at Lillehammer, Norway. How could he miss?

Browning seemed to remove all doubt when he regained No. 1 status in the 1993 global tournament at Prague. But he lost again and in a new book, Steve Milton's Skate Talk, he reveals it was all a ghastly error.

``What a lot of people don't know is that I actually retired after Prague,'' he tells Milton in one of 97 lively interviews with all manner of skating folks. ``I quit. I told the Canadian Figure Skating Association, told my parents, told my agent, told everyone. But I kind of got persuaded to come back.''

In Norway, Browning quickly eliminated himself with uncharacteristic miscues in the short program, placing a catastrophic 12th. His heart, evidently, wasn't in it.

``I think I never truly came back,'' he goes on. ``When I said I quit, I think I actually did. So when I went to Lillehammer, I'm not sure I had that fire, that focus, that killer thing.''

Browning was excellent in the free skating finale the evening the Lillehammer meet concluded, a satisfying but meaningless ending to his amateur career.