SPORTS STEVE MILTON
Kurt Browning returns to the ice with Stars
Kurt Browning wasn’t sure whether he was done with all this or not, but now he’s back touring in front of Canadian audiences.
Browning will be among the headliners on Saturday, May 4 when Stars on Ice makes its annual stop in Hamilton where it’s appeared more often than in any other Canadian city.
Last year, when Stars drew a sold-out crowd at FirstOntario Centre, the cast was made up of Elvis Stojko and skaters who’d competed for Canada at its wildly-successful 2018 Winter Olympics. Legendary ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir now have their own tour and aren’t with Stars this time. Browning helps fill that gap.
Browning was a four-time world champion and at the 1988 Worlds landed the first quadruple jump in skating history. But skating fans associate him and his charismatic artistry as closely with Stars on Ice as they did his mentor and 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton, around whose showmanship and drawing power the touring show was originally built.
For close to three decades, Browning had headlined and often choreographed for Stars on Ice, but he wasn’t with the troupe on its cross-Canada trek last year. That led many to conclude he’d retired from touring.
“I’ll never use the word ‘retirement,’” he told The Spectator. “Last year it was good to just watch all those Olympians coming off their great performances, and Elvis of course. It felt right. This year they asked me to guest skate and then later suggested I come for the whole time.
“So I get to skate with those Olympians, Elvis and with Evgenia,” he said.
That would be the fiercely dynamic Evgenia Medvedeva who trains with Brian Orser in Toronto and, at 19, has already won two world championships and the 2018 Olympic silver medal, just 1.21 points back of fellow Russian Alina Zagitova.
“Evgenia is a huge figure skating star,” Browning says. “She just owns her programs.”
Stojko and Browning will be back on the same ice where in 1993 they staged one of the most memorable head-to-head competitions in Canadian championship history.
Other headliners are four-time world champion and 10-time Canadian champion Patrick Chan; two-time world pairs champions and triple Olympic medallists Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford; Kaetlyn Osmond who last year became Canada’s
first women’s world champion in 45 years; three-time world ice dancing medallists and reigning Canadian champions Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje; national ice dancing silver medallists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier; and reigning Canadian men’s champion Nam Nguyen.
Also appearing for the Hamilton, Toronto and London segment of the tour is 14year-old Stephen Gogolev, runner-up to Nguyen at Nationals. He is the youngest skater ever to land the quadruple toe loop, the youngest to land the quadruple Salchow and the youngest to land a quad Lutz.
Skaters don’t perform such high-risk jumps in off-season tours, but it’s a compelling parallel that Gogolev will be here with the man who executed the very first quad.
“Once you figure it out, it’s like a Rubik’s Cube,” Browning, who went on to build one of skating’s most varied artistic portfolios, says of quad technique.
“Somehow he’s deciphered the quad Rubik’s Cube, he seems to have found the magic elixir.
“Sometimes I totally forget I was part of the whole quad era. Nathan Chen did more quads at Worlds this season than I did in my career. But I do remember that skating into it, knowing that the place was going to freak out ... now that was fun.”
For tickets go to www.tickemaster.ca.