|
|
|
Life on the Edge (1992)
written by Sharron
Life On The Edge is one of the most revealing videos chronicling who Kurt
Browning was and how his life drastically changed between the winning years
'89 through '92 and ending with his tragic disk injury just before the
Albertville Olympics, culminating in a loss to his rival [at the time] Victor Petrenko at
the '92 Worlds in Oakland. This loss was not so much a victory for Victor
as it was a loss for Kurt. Victor was supposed to win the World's in '89. I t was
his turn. He had won the bronze medal in Calgary and the only rival the
rest of the world felt he had was the American Chris Bowman. Kurt's name
was never even mentioned by the press that year. Which was surprising to
the Kid from Caroline because he not only finished third in the free skate
in Calgary, but had made history in Budapest one month later by landing the
first quad in history!
But with the knowledge in his own mind that he could do it, and having
finished 5th in figures which was the best he'd ever finished in that
discipline, Canada's cowboy from the foothills of Alberta put together the
best short and long programs of anyone there and won the World title away
from Victor who, thinking he had no rivals, had mediocre freeskates in both
the short and long programs.
A quote from the video portraying how drastically his life changed after
that competition was that the year before that he had stood for hours in
line to get hockey tickets and ended up being turned away, and just a few
short months later he was invited to the game to sit in the press box with
Wayne and Janet! And he was introduced to the crowd with a resulting standing ovation at the
skydome in TO!
The next year the preamble leading up to the '90 World's was that
Kurt's win was a fluke, The only reason he won was because Victor didn't
skate well - that this jumping bean from Alberta didn't have the skill or
the ballet training to ever compete with the artism of Victor Petrenko. And
it sure appeared to even the Canadian skating fans that it might well have
been just that - a fluke. Kurt was not performing well and had lost all the
competitions he entered leading up to the Canadians where he won but skated
poorly. Kurt came in to Halifax as the underdog even though he was the
defending World Champion no one gave him much of a chance to win. But win
he did and convincingly in front of a packed house of Canadian skating
fans. Johnny Esaw was quoted in the video " I've never seen a reaction like
this to any skater anywhere in any other skating event!"
Going into Munich the next year, Kurt was being taken much more seriously
by everybody. This was no longer considered a fluke. This cowboy's son
from an obscure place in Canada's Rocky mountains was finally demanding his
share of the attention from the media. It was billed as a battle between
the Russian and the Canadian. Kurt speaks about how he thought about this
new rival of his being somewhere in St. Petersburg and how it is an
interesting relationship they had. He says that Victor is why he trains so
hard. They kind of need each other. Kurt had a goal in '91. He wanted to be
the first skater to ever land 3 triple-triple combinations in one program-
no one had even done two. He not only accomplished this goal but he won his
3rd straight world title in a battle that saw Victor skate his best for the
first time but he still lost to Kurt. And going into the Olympic year he
said he was "riding the wave" of this win and skating the best skating of
his life. I also found it interesting that during some of the practice
sessions shown at the rink Kurt was wearing a T-shirt that had a huge
picture of Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca on it. This was even
before he'd been involved with Sandra or anything to do with this era in
his skating. Guess he really was a fan of that movie!
At this point in the video things get very interesting. It states that a
strange thing happened to this World Champion while preparing for his
Olympic season. The Kid from Caroline was growing up. It was no longer
enough for him to be the best jumper in the world. He wanted more. He
wanted to wow them artistically as well as athletically. And this change in
him did not sit well with his coach or his choreographer, neither of whom
believed that Kurt could pull off the difficult choreography and still win.
But he stuck to his guns about wanting to skate to Stravinsky's Firebird
and in doing so he created a conflict with Michael Jiraneck. In the video you see a lot of anger in Kurt that
is something that I don't think I've seen. This is also the beginning of the most devastating
aspect of this young man's career-his disk injury. He began having
persistent back pain in the fall of that year. He went to Lalique, the
pre-Olympic event hoping to meet Victor there in their first event before
Albertville but Victor didn't show.
Had the Kurt camp known that Victor was
going to withdraw they might not have accepted the challenge of going and
trying to skate through the pain, but he did try and slipped a disk during
the free skate. The doctors advised him that he stay off skates for a month
after Lalique, which meant that he was going to lose his most productive
training time before the Olympics. HE WAS DEVASTATED. He hid himself away
from not only the press but from his coaches and even his family.Dewey is
quoted as saying he had to literally go through the lawyers to finally find
out where he was.When he finally did return to the rink it was a
struggle.Not only to get back to where he was physically but mentally and
emotionally as well.His devil may care attitude about his skating was gone.
He no longer enjoyed going to the rink.He was just starting to get some of
this back as the Olympics approached but he did not feel ready. Trying to
cope with knowing that he was not ready and making himself do it was
probably the hardest thing he's ever done. The results, as we all know,
were very difficult for him to swallow- so difficult that he didn't even
stay after his event. He went home feeling the worst he's ever felt about
his skating. But just one month later, he went to Oakland with a renewed
life and skated his heart out during that event. But the poor Olympic skate
was still fresh in the judges' minds and the World Championship for '92 was
given to Victor in a very tight decision.
The video ends with Kurt saying in '92 that the '94 Olympics are so
close that maybe another try-who knows.
This video is one of my favourites because it gives us a realistic
picture of the tragedy of timing of the disk injury and how it created some
emotional demons that I feel were still hanging around in '94 during the
Lillehammer Olympics and even through his first professional season. Gladly
now I think those demons have finally been exorcised forever because our
guy is again skating some of the best of his entire career.
-Sharron
|
|
|
|
|
