Skaters hone creativity for Stars on Ice

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Stars on Ice plays Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Pengrowth Saddledome.

Tickets: $33 to $55, plus service charge, available at TicketMaster, 777-0000 or ticketmaster.ca

There aren't any gold medals at stake or international diplomatic controversies at professional ice shows but, for the skaters, they can be just as challenging as amateur competitions.

Kristi Yamaguchi continues to polish the jumps that won her Olympic gold and numerous world championships between 1988 and 1997.

"I'm still trying to do everything I did before," she says by phone on her way to Calgary for Saturday's Stars on Ice show.

On top of the technical demands, there is the choreography, which California-born Yamaguchi finds particularly rewarding.

"I think it's a great part of skating. Professionally, you can really expand the skater you are by trying different things and using music that is not as traditional as at the Olympics."

Yamaguchi will be on the Pengrowth Saddledome ice with some of skating's biggest names, including Kurt Browning, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, Brian Orser, Alexei Yagudin, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, all of whom she knows from skating competitively.

But the ice show emphasizes teamwork, which is another difference between amateur and professional skating.

"That's what's so great," Yamaguchi says. "It's such a small group and we know each other really well. We're great friends who came up in the skating world together."

For Browning, Stars on Ice, winding up its current tour Tuesday in Vancouver, offers a chance to experiment with every tour.

"For people who have been to six Stars on Ice, we want to give them something a little different."

Born in Rocky Mountain House, Browning was the first skater to land a quadruple jump in competition -- at the 1988 World Championships in Budapest -- and the first competitor to complete a triple salchow-triple loop combination, at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.

Despite such achievements, Browning uses or discards technical flash according to what he thinks works in a given performance.

"Last year, I did a program without any jumps or any spins, and a lot of people didn't notice," the four-time world champion says. "When you're a professional, you're motivated by different things.

"When you're an amateur, you're pretty focused on what you think you need to do to win, some sort of game plan you think is going to beat some Russian guy who's training six time zones away."

Browning's focus is now on entertainment value and he got some creative help for the first number he will perform in Saturday's show.

"Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies came to my house with a guitar and he wrote this first piece of music that I skate to.

"He put it on a disc for me. It took me four years to figure out a time and a place to use it, but I'm using it this year.

"For my second number, I'm skating to U2. I did that just for fun and I hope that everyone else enjoys it, too."