Second World Title for Browning

HALIFAX, March 7 - A yearlong odyssey ended for Kurt Browning of Canada tonight as he successfully defended his men's title in the world figure skating championships, putting to rest concerns that he was squandering his talents, rather than improving them.

With a clean if not spectacular free skating performance, Browning passed Viktor Petrenko of the Soviet Union with higher marks from eight of the nine judes to become the first male skater to repeat as world champion since Scott Hamilton won his fourth consecutive world championship in 1984.

Petrenko, whose third-place finish two years ago was his previous best, held second place, and Christopher Bowman, who withdrew from the United States championships last month with a back injury, climbed two places to take third place with an improvisational performance that shocked his coach.

It's definitely better the second time, " said Browning, the first male Canadian skater to retain a title. "This one I really worked for."

For a time, that had been an arguable point. After his championship a year ago in Paris, he became an instant national hero, a kind of psychic salve for the embarrassment caused by Ben Johnson's positive drug test in track and field at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Browning was besieged by endorsement requests, his social life improved, and his practice time decreased.

In the fall, he finished third at the NHK in Tokyo and Skate America in Indianapolis. In January, he was in a car accident in Edmonton, where he lives during training.

He was unhurt, but the experience seemed to shake him back to reality. Over the next two months he trained with a vengeance.

As the second skater in the final group of five tonight, Browning moved into a huge breach created by Petrenko, who skated just before him. Petrenko had plenty of momentum coming into this tournament, having won the European championships last month in Leningrad for his first major title. He had also won the short program to take first place.

But in a program with 10 triple jumps, an unusually high number, he landed only six, thus reducing the maximum points he could win for technical merit.

Given the opening, Browning sailed through and he did not even have to complete a quad. The only skater to land one, last year in Paris, he had intended to try again, with two possible places for it within the first 50 seconds of his performance. But in the first, he inserted a triple-double combination instead and later left in another triple.

"The warmup scared me a little bit," Browning said. "I just thought that a fall would make things too close."

The rest of the way, the only evident error was a triple jump he stepped out of, and by the end, the partisan crowd had leaped to a long standing ovation.

Once he was finished, third place was still unsettled, with Grzegorz Filipowski, a Polish skater who trains in Rochester, Minn., hoping to hold off the last three skaters, Todd Eldredge, the 18-year-old United States champion; Richard Zander of West Germany and Bowman.

Eldredge fell trying to complete the first half of a triple-triple combination. Still, he finished fifth.

Zander, the leader after compulsories, was flat and uninspiring, so that left it for Bowman. He was solid throught he first half of his performance, with only a minor flaw, before he ditched what he had planned the second half and ad-libbed his way through the end.

"All I knew is that I thought about halfway through that this was really neat," Bowman said, "But I'm going against Kurt and Viktor, so I better start jumping my brains out."

Frank Carroll, his coach, stood at the far end of the rink aghast.

"I was in total shock," he said, clearly irritated. "A new program unveiled for the first time in the world championships."