Let the Games begin

LILLEHAMMER - Kurt Browning had just been saying how nice it was, in a way, not to be The Great Canadian Hope at these Olympic Games the way he was in 1992.

People had come up to him since his arrival in Norway, comforting him over his loss to Elvis Stojko at the Canadian figure skating championships, trying to put a happy face on it by saying "you've carried the torch for Canada for four or five years now; you don't have to do that here. You can just relax and skate."

A couple of hours later, they were handing him the flag. So much for relaxation.

"I guess you just never know when one of those quotes is going to come back to haunt you," said Browning, 27, grinning from ear to ear and clutching the flagpole after Canadian chef de mission Bill Warren chose the four-time world men's champion from Caroline, Alta., to lead his nation's Olympians into today's opening ceremonies of the Lillehammer Games.

"I don't get choked up on a podium - I've been a world champion four times - but I've never felt so Canadian."

He didn't seem to mind the flag's ominous overtones. The Canadian flag hasn't exactly been a magic wand to its carrier the past few years.

In Barcelona, decathlete Michael Smith was bestowed with the honor. He blew out a hamstring and had to withdraw after five events. In Albertville, the assignment went to short-track speed skater Sylvie Daigle. She crashed in her individual specialty. In Calgary six years ago, it was Brian Orser, Browning's predecessor. Orser skated well but was beaten by Brian Boitano, who's now back challenging Browning and Stojko and 1992 gold medallist Viktor Petrenko of Ukraine.

Asked if the flag-bearing responsibility added pressure to his task, Browning said: "Not to drop it, maybe. That's the only pressure."

But he understood where the question was coming from. This is hi third Olympics, but Calgary was his first, and Orser was his competitive role model. He saw the strain his teammate was under.

"But in his case, (all) of Canada really was waiting for him to skate. He was our potential Golden Boy," said Browning. "That's not the case here. There's so many Canadians who have great chances. In this event alone, we've got two chances at a medal, so that tells you something."

They are, indeed, two of many Canadian medal hopes here. Two years after the nation's largest Olympic medal haul in 60 years - going back to 1932 in Lake Placid, N.Y. - Canada's athletes appear poised to decimate the Albertville record of seven.

If the Canadian Olympic Association's own three-star ratings of our 1994 representatives mean anything, CAnada has a serious shot at as many as 18 medals in Lillehammer - and even if that's an awfully optimistic figure, it makes for a convincing argument that a nation of 23 million people, a nation renowned for nine months of hockey and three months of bad ice, is finally ready to fulfill its promise as a legitimate winter-sports country.

Nor are the Canadian chances all in fringe sports - a criticism heard after Albertville, where athletes in the then-brand new Olympic sport of short track accounted for four of our seven medals.

This time, we have men's prospects in figure skating, bobsled, women's alpine skiing, and both short- and long-track speed skating, in addition to biathlon and freestyle skiing - and if you believe deeply enough in Canadian ingenuity at ice hockey, you migt even convince yourself the hockey squad has a shot.