Event Preview: Skating with the Stars

The Rink at PPG Plaza isn't nearly large enough to contain the athletic feats of four-time world figure skating champion Kurt Browning, so the kids with whom he skated had to settle for a single axel instead of a triple.

They weren't disappointed, though, for he had plenty of other tricks up his sleeve.

Soon he had them lined up with hands joined, whizzing around the tight circle of the rink. "Crack the Whip!" he shouted, and a couple of the kids went rocketing off in different directions, laughing in delight despite a temperature in the teens and a hard wind that made it feel like, well, nobody really wanted to know.

The kids weren't laughing as hard as Browning, though, and when one of the Special Olympians presented him with her gold skating medal, he just as obviously was moved.

"That's the only one I never won," said Browning, who ran into bad luck in his trips to the Olympics in 1992 and 1994. He finished sixth at the '92 Albertville Winter Games and fifth at Nagano, Japan. Browning thanked the smiling girl for her gift and hugged her.

Browning, 35, was in Pittsburgh Monday to promote the Stars on Ice show at Mellon Arena Sunday and to make the day of these Special Olympians. He scored high on both counts. He pushed some of the kids around the ice like a train engine, taught three of them how to glide on one knee and posed for picture after picture and video after video. He even skated a couple of laps "the old-fashioned way" with this reporter, who was making her third wobbly appearance on ice since somewhere around 1970.

"Hey, you're doing great for it being 30 years," he said. "Left foot, right foot, what else is there?"

His talent for comedy -- he entertained the Special Olympians with some clownish tripping and stumbling -- is just one of the attributes that makes Browning one of the most beloved male skaters in history and a standout in the star-laden Stars on Ice ensemble cast. He has an uncanny gift for impressions -- anyone who has ever seen his "Casablanca" and Philip Marlowe-style routines will attest to that. And his athleticism -- he was the first skater to land a quadruple jump in competition -- remains that of a far younger man. Browning, the son of a cowboy, also was a talented hockey player as a youngster growing up in Carolina, Alberta, Canada. But he made what proved to be a great decision to concentrate on figure skating when he was 15.

A four-time Canadian champion now in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, Browning had time for seriousness during his visit here, too. The controversy involving the Olympic pairs competition in Salt Lake City upset him as much as any viewer, and he has given the long-ingrained problems in judging much thought.

"You want people to trust your sport, and if people are talking more about the judging than they are the skating, then something's wrong," he said.

"You know you get used to things in your own house. You get used to how things work and you get used to judges having opinions and changing other judges' opinions and campaigning for their skaters. You get used to that and you grow up with it and you live with it.

"But out-and-out cheating -- let's clean house. Let's be respectable. You come and pay money to see Katarina Witt, Kristi Yamaguchi because they were great champions. You want people to trust that they're the one who won."

Browning said he has talked to a "high-up" man in the International Skating Union who previewed serious changes to be considered at the next meeting.

They include picking judges closer in time to the competitions, leaving less time for pressuring other judges.

"They might not be putting in numbers any more," Browning added. "They'll be putting in excellent, very good, good, average, below average, mediocre and bad, and they'll just push a button so you can pick the excellent button for the top three skaters. ... Then they'll have to figure out some system that ranks how tough each jump is and what factor that jump is and weight it like diving. Then the computer will have this magic number, how hard that program is and it'll [multiply] that number by what percentage.

"This is what I've heard."

Browning has an idea of his own.

"I've always hated that one judge gives both marks," he said. "It should be one judge gives a technical mark; one judge gives an artistic mark, and then you don't control the outcome so much. So why even have two marks? Why not give just one mark like they do in gymnastics. ...

Browning, who is married to the principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada, Sonia Rodriguez, also has wondered if going outside skating to find the judges for artistry might be a good direction to go. "A specialist panel," he said. "There's a dancer, there's a singer, there's a musician, there's a skater."

A change in the fact that judges are allowed to attend every practice also might be beneficial, he said. Instead, he suggests "an open practice where you can preview your program for the judges, you can choose to go or not and then those judges sit there and you give it your best shot to influence them or to prepare them for what [the skaters] are going to be doing because it's hard" for a judge to see.

Browning, who lives with his wife of five years in Toronto, noted that the number of ice shows touring here and abroad have multiplied despite occasional scandals or controversies like the one in Salt Lake City. "If the Golf Channel can exist, we can do as much skating as we want to. I'm a fan of golf, but a whole channel of it? I always stop at golf; I always watch for a while. If [the ice show] is good, there'll be room for it. The bad things don't stay, and the good things do, and the people make that decision."

And Stars on Ice has always been a good show -- it's been touring since 1986. But this is the first year without its founder, Scott Hamilton. Potential audiences have to wonder what it's like without him.

"It's quiet in the dressing room," Browning quipped. "He's so funny.

"It's been fine," he added. "It's always been designed as a show that didn't rely on one person to be there. We can have an injury and the show will still go on. That's why his name was never put on it. It never was Scott Hamilton's Stars on Ice."

Attendance is down some this season, Browning said, but he blames the Sept. 11 terrorist attack -- "it was a terrible blow to all sorts of things" -- and the Olympics.

"Before the Olympics there's always a down," he said. "We've seen it every year, and after the Olympics it goes back up."

With Hamilton gone from the show, Browning said he's had to assume a little more responsibility. "I get the microphone a little more often [on ice]," he said. "They give me some choreographic responsibilities as well."

But Browning said he and the rest of the men are just supporting actors to Tara Lipinski, Yamaguchi and Witt.

"The show's all about the girls," he said. To that extent, the men have a number where they stage a sort of panty raid in protest. "It's more of a fishnet raid," he said.

But Browning is wrong if he thinks the show is just about "the girls." Last year one of the most popular numbers featured the men skating on chairs. This year, they skate on tables, a routine choreographed by Olympic ice dance champion Christopher Dean.

"It's very playful and very physical. We're over the tables, under the tables, flinging them around," Browning said. "We're sliding on them, rolling on them while they spin. They're wood and they're heavy. I fall back on it and land on it. I spin it around me ... so that's fun."

For skaters and audience alike. Remember, there are no judges.

Event Preview: The rest of the Team

TARA LIPINSKI -- Skating fans best remember Lipinski as the 15-year-old sprite who upset heavily favored Michele Kwan to win the gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics and become the youngest athlete to win a championship in any Winter Olympic sport. But Lipinski has become much more than an engaging jumping jack in the four years since her stunning victory. She has developed her artistry so that it matches, perhaps even surpasses, her on-ice athleticism. Still only 19 years old, she also has become a commercial spokeswoman for a long list of companies ranging from McDonald's to Charles Schwab and launched a promising acting career. Among her acting gigs are a recurring role on the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" and a spot in the new Tom Cruise film "Vanilla Sky."

KRISTI YAMAGUCHI -- Stars on Ice co-star Kurt Browning says Yamaguchi is skating even better now than she did when she joined the tour as the reigning Olympic champion 10 years ago. "I don't know how she does it," he said of Yamaguchi, 30. Along with two amateur senior world championships, she has won all of the major pro competitions at least once and remains one of the most popular female athletes in any sport. One of the few women to reach the highest levels of amateur skating both in singles and pairs -- she was world junior champion in both events -- her multiple talents make her a perfect fit for the ensemble-style numbers in Stars on Ice. Yamaguchi is married to Bret Hedican, a player with the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes in the National Hockey League.

KATARINA WITT -- Who will ever forget her "Dueling Carmens" with American Debi Thomas at the 1988 Calgary Olympics? Or her moving interpretation of Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," which she dedicated to war-torn Sarajevo at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games? It is no wonder this two-time Olympic, four-time world champion was voted No. 1 living female Winter Olympic athlete of the century by the Associated Press in 1999. Witt, 36, has gone on to have an acting career, with roles in "Jerry Maguire," "Ronin" and in the HBO comedy series "Arli$$." She returns to Stars on Ice for the first time since 1997.

ILIA KULIK -- Kulik, 24, a native of Moscow, won the 1998 Olympic championship in Nagano, Japan, and then turned professional. He is in his fourth season with Stars on Ice. Now a resident of Los Angeles, Kulik also has begun acting and last year was in the Nicholas Hytner film "Center Stage." He and his partner, Olympic pairs champion Ekaterina Gordeeva, became the parents of a baby girl, Elizaveta, last June 15.

ANJELIKA KRYLOVA and OLEG OUSIANNIKOV -- Russians Krylova, 28, and Ousiannikov, 32, began ice dancing together in 1994 after years of skating with other partners. Two years later they won the world silver medal and two years after that they won the Olympic silver medal in Nagano, Japan. New this year to Stars on Ice, they live, train and teach at the University of Delaware.

JENNI MENO and TODD SAND -- This married couple is the most successful pairs skaters in American history: they are three-time national champions, 1998 world silver medalists and two-time world bronze medalists. They also represented the United States at three Olympics. Former singles skaters, each had different pairs partners before they teamed in 1992. Their first year they were fifth at worlds. They finished fifth -- and got engaged -- at the 1994 Olympics and married the following year. Meno, 31, and Sand, 38, have their own training rink in Costa Mesa, Calif.

DENIS PETROV -- Petrov, 33, is former pairs partner of Elena Bechke, with whom he won the Olympic silver medal in 1992. He is skating alone for the second consecutive year in Stars on Ice. Elena and Denis teach skaters of all levels in Richmond, Va.

STEVEN COUSINS -- Cousins, 29, is an eight-time British champion who now trains in Barrie, Ontario. Known for his fun-loving style on and off the ice, he also is developing an acting career. Cousins skated at three Olympic Games. He was sixth in 1998 at Nagano, Japan.