And half a lifetime later, the Canadian superstar has pulled it all
off, and then some. He has the World Championships - and his place in
the history books. Audiences worldwide adore him for his extraordinary
talent and the many ways with which he chooses to use it.
Now Browning finds himself with young eyes trained on him, such as
those of rising Canadian star Fedor Andreev, who calls Browning "the god
of figure skating."
Kurt Browning thinks about all of this and can't help but smile.
"I'm aware of my age and where I'm at in my career now," says
Browning, 34, from small-town Caroline, Alberta. "To hear people like
Fedor and Ben Ferreira say nice things about you, that's great. But I
would hate to think that I've been a four-time Canadian and World
Champion and not have any Canadian skater look at something I've done
and want to take something from it. I'd be thinking, What was I
doing all those years?"
Browning cemented his place in figure skating history 12 years ago,
when he landed the first quadruple jump in competition, at the 1988
World Championships, in Budapest. A year later he became World Champion,
in Paris. He did again in 1990, on home soil, in Halifax.
The legend had its foundation, and it was rock-solid.
"Those were important years for me," Browning says in retrospect.
"There was the quad; the (1989) World title was really important in
establishing that the quad was not a fluke. And winning in Canada was
important because I had a lot of injuries that nobody really knew
about."
He's since tacked on two more World Championships, in 1991, and '93.
And he's won three World Professional titles (1995-97).
One of Browning's many assets is that he has never been afraid to try
new things or try a new way of doing old things.
"That clown program was a risk, and we knew it," says Browning of his
famed routine, which debuted at the 1998 Canadian Open, in Kitchener,
Ont., and is now a hit on the Stars on Ice tour. "We didn't want
to have me just skate across the ice in clown clothes; that's been done
before. We wanted to do clown things and actually create a clown
character.
"Michael Seibert found the music and thought it was funny. There are
parts where there is actually no music. If you sit down and listen to
the music by itself, you actually start laughing."
Browning refers to it as the biggest challenge he's ever had, "But I
really wanted to try it."
When you've been at the game as long as Browning, coming up with
something new every year is never easy. Sometimes it means working with
a wide variety of different choreographers. One early masterpiece was
compliments of Sandra Bezic, whose Casablanca choreography served
as the springboard of Browning's transistion from athlete to performer.
Browning has also collaborated with ice dance legend Christopher Dean,
who he says has a "very different style."
"He'll have 60 seconds [of the program] choreographed in about five
minutes. He comes to the rink with a program in his head already,"
Browning describes. "That blew me away."
For "Play That Funky Music" - a current number that serves as a
follow-up to his wildly successful funk-rock foray, "Brickhouse" - it
was dancer Roberto Campanella at the choreographic helm. And Browning
has even gone to the most important dancer in his life - his wife, Sonia
Rodriguez, a performer with the National Ballet of Canada - to
brainstorm.
"She works with me for fun," says Browning. "But she hasn't really
shown an interest in taking charge of a whole program and choreographing
it for me. She works with me a lot, but it's more to be together."
Browning says he always aims to please an audience, no matter its
size.
"Sometimes a small audience of 300 can be exciting because you can
see the face of every person," describes Browning. "Fifteen thousand
people is another kind of energy. I like the potential of having 15,000
people happy all at once - but it's kind of scary, too. What if
they're looking at each other, saying, What was that? This is not
what I paid for!
"When it doesn't happen for you, it's an awful feeling."
But now, as a polished professional, Browning has learned that one of
the keys to stardom is consistency.
"As an amateur, I was not the most consistent skater," admits
Browning. "When I was a kid, I remember watching Brian Orser and saying
to myself, How does he skate so well every night? That's
impossible! But I've come to realize that it is possible.
That's part of being a professional."
The realization of that possibility, however, is fueled by the
competitive fire that burns red-hot within him. "You have some people
saying it's just nice to be able to show up and skate well," says
Browning. "The heck with that; I'm there to win! I don't like losing."
Losing was definitely not on the agenda in January, when Browning was
inducted into the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame, during the
Canadian Championships in Calgary. The induction was something of a
homecoming for the skater, who got to reunite with parents Dewey and
Neva, older brother Wade and older sister Dena in Alberta, the province
where they all still reside.
Those are the moments that Browning cherishes most - such as the time
he spent away from the Stars on Ice tour last year, at the arena
in Caroline, where this skating career began. Browning speaks with a
nostalgia-tinged enthusiasm about the show he did to raise funds for the
building - in which he spent so many quiet days, shooting pucks with his
fater - aptly renamed the Kurt Browning Arena.
There were painful moments in the past year as well. Browning's
mother has been ill, and it's a situation that weights on him heavily
almost every day.
"It's hard to phone home and know things are pretty tough. You want
to be there," he says. "But I'm not the only one who lives away from
his parents when they're getting older. You're okay one day; you feel
terrible the next. One day your emotions are fragile; the next day you
feel fine. That's just life."
It is a life that, despite all its glitzy trappings and perks, is
lived just as comfortably away from it all. When Browning is home in
Toronto, with Sonia, they often pass the time dining out a favorite
restaurant, going to movies, or walking the dog.
"It's so normal, it sounds boring," Browning admits. "But we're no
different than a lot of people."
That pull, to be home, will likely have more than anything to do with
how much longer Browning will lace up his skates and head off into the
bright lights of figure skating's most glamorous venues. He's seen
other skaters tour nonstop for more than a decade, and while he shakes
his head in amazement, he'll point out that he can't see doing it
himself. Browning admits he needed last year's break and that, "I
wouldn't be surprised if I took another year off, at some point, and
then came back again."
As long as he is out there, though, Kurt Browning will strive to be
different, to bring new things to the sport he's helped shape in so many
ways for more than a decade. And, inevitably, it will be Browning's
turn to give a legion of admiring young skaters back home even more
reason to gaze up at the stars and dream.
