Browning and Sato Win Pro Championships

Copyright 1995 the Associated Press. -- All Rights Reserved

Kurt Browning felt the magic and made it work for him.

Yuka Sato felt she was overlooked, and made that work for her.

Browning and Sato each won their first World Professional Figure Skating Championships in stunning fashion Saturday night by upsetting the usually unbeatable.

Browning beat Brian Boitano, a six-time winner of the event, coming from behind in the free skate. The Canadian who won four amateur worlds, but was a bust in the 1992 and '94 Olympics, used ''a hunk of funk'' to collect five perfect 10.0s and two 9.9s from the judges in the free skate, worth 50 percent of the total score.

Skating to ''Brick House'' by the Commodores, Browning's rubber-legged act wowed the crowd of 18,150. It also so impressed the judges the top and bottom scores were thrown out that he received a 49.9 for the routine.

Boitano won the technical program with a powerful performance to ''Appalachian Spring'' from his 1994 Olympic long program, nailing five triple jumps to edge Browning.

''I didn't really think Landover as my type of competition,'' Browning said. ''I have always seen it as someone else's to win. When people stood up after my first program, I thought to myself, 'There is some magic here.' And I tried to maintain it for the next hour and a half.'

Browning had floundered in his first season as a pro, so this victory was special.

''It means a lot to me, because I had a water-logged year last year and couldn't get going,'' he said. ''I really kind of saw a night like this not happening again.''

Viktor Petrenko of Ukraine, the 1992 Olympic champion, was third, followed by Paul Wylie.

Japan's Sato, who won the 1994 amateur world championship on what many considered a hometown decision, stamped herself as a genuine force Saturday.

Sato, at 22 the youngest skater in the singles field, won both the technical and free skate programs in edging 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, a two-time winner of this prestigious event. She established her superiority in the technical routine with precise spins and four solid triple jumps, then finished with superb footwork.

''In the United States, to win as a Japanese ... it is not easy to do. No one really knows about me,'' Sato said. ''It is really hard for me to win in this country. I just started getting the feeling what kind of stuff American audiences like. We have the totally different cultures. Sometimes I think it will be really great, but you never know over here.''

Neither Sato nor Yamaguchi did anything outstanding in the free skate, and Sato held on. Her winning total was 98.8 points from the seven judges only five marks in each event count, with the highest and lowest thrown out. Yamaguchi managed 98.3.

''I wasn't very surprised. It was my goal for this year,'' Sato said. ''I thought this was a good chance. I can't ever say there isn't any chance for myself. If I do well, you never know, I kept telling myself.''

Nancy Kerrigan had a disappointing night, looking rusty in what is planned as her only significant individual competition this season. She was fourth, behind Denise Biellmann of Switzerland.

The indomitable dance champions, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, took the gold with smooth, entertaining routines to music by Paul Simon. They edged a strong field that included 1992 Olympic champs Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko and '94 Olympic runners-up Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin.

The British couple collected nine 10.0s on the night, winning its fourth world pro title.

''Always performing before an audience when it counts, you are being judged, to that degree everybody can see a standard or a marker,'' Dean said. ''Then obviously it counts.''

Nearly a dozen years after their magnificent Olympic triumph in Sarajevo, Torvill and Dean remain the people's choice. Their every move was cheered by the sellout crowd.

Radka Kovarikova and Rene Novotny, the Czech couple who won the world championships for Olympic-eligible skaters earlier this year, also took the pro worlds in their debut. They were helped by a rare opportunity for a re-skate after Kovarikova fell when she became entangled in part of the decorations around the sideboards. She also had fallen earlier in the free skate, but the referee stopped the program after the second mishap and allowed a rerun.

The Czechs wound up with 99.2 points, winning both programs. Elena Bechke and Denis Petrov of Russia were second, followed by Canada's Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini. No American won a gold medal in this event for the first time in its 16-year history.

A moment of silence was observed prior to the competition to honor the memory of Sergei Grinkov, the two-time Olympic pairs champion with wife Ekaterina Gordeeva. Grinkov died of a heart attack last month. The couple had been scheduled to compete at this event.