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Saying goodbye, at long last: Kurt Browning skates into Saskatoon on farewell tour
"I'll miss it, I'm not even going to lie. My dad said not many people, at the end of their work day, get applause."
| Source: |
Saskatoon StarPhoenix |
| Date: |
May 9, 2023 |
| Author: |
Kevin Mitchell |
Kurt Browning remembers the car ride, more than the skating.
He was 15 years old in 1982, wheels rolling toward Saskatoon, for the
Western Divisional figure skating championships.
Once he arrived, and skated in the novice competition at ACT Arena,
the StarPhoenix dispensed with him in one sentence:
Kurt Browning of Rocky Mountain House, Alta. finished third.
“I remember the drive,” says Browning, now 56, and skating here at
Stars on Ice Thursday night at SaskTel Centre.
“I remember leaving the house at 3:45 in the morning, my mom and my
dad making a bit of a bed in the back of the station wagon, and I
slept most of the way.
“And back then, I remember feeling like there was more people out
there like me than I knew. I started traveling and meeting new people,
and realizing that my fraternity of skating is bigger than I ever
dreamed. And soon after that, I was moving to Edmonton, and then
things really took off.”
So today Browning gets a headline and a feature story, because he’s
not a man you dispense with in one sentence. Not for many years
now.
He’s on his farewell tour with Stars on Ice, after a career — both
competitive and professional — that made him a household name in
Canada. He built that relationship with his country jump by jump,
decade by decade.
Browning doesn’t “feel like an omnipotent 25-year-old anymore,” as he
puts it.
Recovery takes a little longer these days. Arena lights hit his eyes
differently.
But this is no doddering, bone-creaking athlete. He keeps himself
trim, lungs and heart strong, muscles still doing the things he wills
them to do.
“When I hit my jumps,” Browning says, “I think they’re comparable to
almost everyone else in the show. I’m very disappointed if I don’t,
because I still feel 25 in my heart. I still want the audience to see
a good jump out of me. If I miss a jump, it doesn’t really change
anything, but it changes how I feel. The ego is still embarrassingly
pretty strong. So I want to hit my jumps, and feel good about
myself.”
And that’s why he’s stopping now, rather than hanging on to 60. He
feels no need to hit a numeric milestone with Stars on Ice, so he’s
saying farewell to the fans, spinning one final time for their
amusement and edification.
“You become a little bit more of a sideshow thing (if you skate longer
than you should),” Browning says. “I’m not sure what the right
terminology is, but if I’m skating until I’m 60, or 65, it’s sweet —
‘Aw, look at Kurt Browning. That’s nice.’
“But I don’t want to be sweet and nice. I want to be doing a triple
jump, and I want to be doing a back flip — I still do that flip in the
show. I want to earn my spot out there. So I don’t think I want to
stick around past those abilities.”
Browning’s choreographed routine on this final tour includes nods to
old moves he’s long been fond of — some “bittersweet things,” as he
puts it, farewell moments. It’s a physical piece, and he’s breathing
hard at the end.
“It’s a photo album of old programs,” he said, and there’s also that
duet with longtime friend and competitor Elvis Stojko, another neat
touch.
“The interviews are different (on a farewell tour), and the audience
is different,” he says. “It’s just got a cozy feel to it. I’ve been
describing it like a hug.”
Browning is Saskatoon-bound, in part, because that 15-year-old who
stopped here in 1982 loved the sport enough to shake off outside
distractions that waylay so many other teens.
“It’s so multi-faceted as a sport,” he said. “It’s super-physical, but
it’s also heart and warmth, and it’s entertainment and it’s
acting. Comedy, drama, whatever you want. You have to have a certain
personality before you really fall in love with it.
“It helped,” he added, “that I was winning. It breeds confidence, and
makes you want to keep going. I just never, in my wildest dreams,
thought I’d be one month from 57 …”
There was, of course, no way for that 15-year-old Kurt Browning —
third place, Western Divisional figure skating championships, 1982 —
to muster even the barest comprehension of how long he’d last. Of how
he would skate in a spotlight for the next 41 years, Olympics, world
championships, ice shows.
“You can’t fathom age at that age,” says Browning, who is a four-time
world champion. “You just can’t. You know your parents are older, you
know your grandparents are even older. But I don’t think you have any
idea of the passage of time. It was never a long-term plan, and I
think that actually helped me stay in the sport — ‘You want to do it
again this year?’ ‘Sure!’
“I’m having fun and paying the bills, and there was a certain period
of time where I was making really good coin. It was ‘why do I want to
stop this? Do you want to explain to me why I want to stop something I
love?’ So I never had that moment.
“What’s been hard is injuries along the way, where you have a run
where you’re not skating as well as you’d like to. That’s an awful
feeling. I hate that. You do it for the audience, and you feel like
you’ve let people down.”
Browning says he quietly toyed with the idea of retiring from Stars on
Ice in 2015, and again in 2018, but nothing came of it. And then
COVID-19 came along, and he did not want THAT to be his end.
But now, he’s on one final cross-country tour, and he’s at peace with
it. If he gets a phone call next year, somebody asking if he can go to
Japan to do his clown number, sure. He might go and do it
again.
But he wants to — in his words — “protect” his legacy with Stars on
Ice, and his ability to perform well, night after night, with all the
work that entails.
He’s asked what he’s cherished more — the competitive career, or the
professional one — and he gives a long pause.
“You can’t have the second without the first, so it’s a tough question
to answer. If they were wildly separated — if one didn’t demand the
other — I would definitely answer ‘professional’ because of the
longevity, and the payback you get from doing a good
performance. Affecting people in their hearts, and inspiring kids to
skate.
“And because I’m older, inspiring middle-aged people to stay in shape,
or get a pair of skates, or come skating with me. That’s one of the
things I’ll want to do, when I’m not in Stars on Ice anymore, is work
with adult skaters and give them more of a voice. Give them a place
where they can find seminars, and find other adult skaters. Because
you know what? That’s kind of what I am, is an adult skater.
“Geez — I’m almost 60, for crying out loud, and still doing it. So I
think I understand what they’re going through.”
But first, he has this 12-city tour to finish, including a final
on-ice goodbye to Saskatoon Thursday at 7 p.m. Browning won a Canadian
championship in this city nine years after that third-place novice
showing, and now he can savour the cheers one last time.
“I’ll miss it, I’m not even going to lie,” Browning remarked. “My dad
said not many people, at the end of their work day, get
applause.”
He laughed.
“I guess you’re right, dad. It’s pretty true.”
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