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Canada's revolutionary figure skater
It's been 20 years since Kurt Browning took the world by storm, landing the first Quad in history. The jump changed everything, for him and his sport.
| Source: |
Vancouver Sun |
| Date: |
March 17, 2008 |
| Author: |
Cam Cole |
You owe it to yourself to have a look. Go online, call up Google,
punch in "Kurt Browning first quad" and you'll come upon a YouTube
video of a young, fully coiffed Browning, opening his long program
with the jump that started a revolution. Or rather, four of
them.
Hard to believe, as you watch the grainy footage, that this week's
world figure skating championships -- Sweden's first in 32 years --
will mark the 20th anniversary of that landmark leap, which hardly
anyone in the Budapest Sports Hall on March 25, 1988, even realized he
had landed.
But he knew. And Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic and four-time word
champion who was doing colour on the telecast, knew. And the judges
knew.
As Browning came down on his right skate blade, 29 seconds into his
program, the sheer torque of the quadruple toe loop forced an extra
turn and a half on the ice as he fought -- stylishly, mind you, with
an "I meant to do that" flair -- to stay upright.
But the jump was good, and history was made. And a career was
kick-started, one that is still ticking along, in remarkably fine
fettle, though its owner is now a 41-year-old, part-time Mr. Mom with
two little boys and a head as bereft of hair as that of his friend and
former mentor, Hamilton.
"Ten (years) didn't seem like 10," Browning said the other day,
calling from the train en route to Kingston, Ont., to promote an April
20 stop on this year's Stars On Ice tour, which concludes May 7 at GM
Place in Vancouver.
"But 20 feels like 20. Whether it's your perspective of sports, or of
yourself, or parenting . . . a lot has happened since then."
Not all of it has been happy. His mother, Neva, died in 2000. His
father, Dewey, who spent his life as an outfitter and trail guide in
the shadow of the Rockies in Caroline, Alta., has struggled with
health problems and is living in Florida. There were the two Olympics,
Albertville and Lillehammer, where Browning went in with a real chance
at gold -- he was too young in Calgary, a month before he landed the
Quad -- but came home without a medal.
But the good parts have been very good, indeed.
Like the four world titles in a five-year span -- Paris, Halifax,
Munich, Prague -- starting the year after he opened all those eyes in
Budapest. And the explosion of the sport in Canada that coincided with
his rivalry with Elvis Stojko. And the body of work that includes some
of the most memorable skating performances ever, like his Casablanca
long program in 1993-94, and his Singin' In the Rain TV special, and
dozens of show-skates that were dazzling in their versatility.
And his marriage to Sonia Rodriguez, the beautiful principal dancer of
the National Ballet, and the birth of their two sons - Gabriel, who
will be five this summer, and seven-month-old Dillon.
The Quad was definitely one of the highs. Though he finished sixth at
those 1988 world championships, he returned home to find an Edmonton
auto dealer had rewarded him with a mini-SUV bearing a licence plate
that read: "1STQUAD."
But oddly enough, the quad fairly quickly ceased to be a weapon in his
arsenal, and to his credit, it hasn't come close to defining him as a
skater.
"I remember thinking I didn't want to waste this opportunity," he
said, "because this jump had happened, and everyone around me was
freaking out, and I knew I had done something special, so I thought: I
need to follow this up. I didn't want to be remembered just for
that. I guess, more than anything, it inspired me."
He didn't land one, cleanly, in any of his four gold-medal wins at
world championships.
"I don't think I landed it in competition more than three, maybe four
times."
It was Stojko who took the Quad to the next level, landing it
routinely and doing the first Quad-double combination. After that, the
jump became, as Stojko's coach, Doug Leigh, was fond of saying, "like
the American Express card: don't leave home without it." The Russians
owned it. Then the Chinese. Then the Japanese. American Tim Goebel
once did three quads in the same long program.
But it has remained an elusive, unpredictable weapon -- and in the new
scoring system, where points are awarded for the quality of each
element and jump, not just the number of revolutions, it has become
less of a guarantee of good marks than a tie-breaker, if all else is
equal.
"It feels like the quad, this year, isn't as important as it has been
in other years, that's just kind of the vibe out there," Browning
said. "The CBC was showing me some stats on how many quads have been
landed this year. Not very many. I just think that maybe the new
system is downplaying the quad enough that the reward is not worth the
risk.
"The stats they showed me made me go, 'Wow, this is perfect for guys
like Jeffrey Buttle and Patrick Chan. If the quad is just not
happening for guys out there this year, then this is your
chance.'"
Browning used to be tempted to dust off the quad and give it a whirl
every once in a while.
He had forgotten all about the 10th anniversary until some fans
presented him with a bottle of champagne. He tried the jump a few
times in practice that day, and surprised himself by landing it. So he
put one into the Stars On Ice show that night, and nailed it.
"In 2001, I think I did some on tour. But 2003 was the last time I
tried it. The triple-triple was going really well and I was in great
shape and I thought: you know what? I'm going to see what happens," he
said.
"Two tremendous collisions with gravity later . . . I haven't tried it
since. I mean, they were the kind of falls where everyone covers their
eyes, where you catch your blade sideways and you actually accelerate
into the ice. I was sore on tour in the States for days -- my elbow,
my hip -- and it was, 'OK, that was stupid.' "
Some day, though, he has no doubt someone will do a five-revolution
jump.
"I've always said yes. But I'm going to have to see it to believe it,"
Browning said.
"I don't think it will ever be consistent like the quad, but you have
to believe that there's someone out there who doesn't understand the
laws of physics."
Or the laws of tortured joints and pain and punishment.
That part, Kurt Browning doesn't miss so much.
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