Worlds Wayback Machine: Kurt Browning, 1989 Free Skate
When I was a kid, and people asked me which figure skater I wanted to grow up to be like, I knew what the answer was supposed to be. I was supposed to want to be Debi Thomas or Jill Trenary when I grew up. Katarina Witt might have been acceptable, although that answer would have pegged me as kind of a Communist. I chose Midori Ito and Surya Bonaly, because triple axels were cool, and I enjoyed it when adults looked at me sideways. They were the wrong answers, but they were wrong answers I could get away with.
It was all a lie. I wanted to be Kurt Browning. As cool as triple axels were, quadruple toe loops were even cooler. I wanted to wear a suave tux and make people laugh; I wanted to flash a confident smile and melt the judges' hearts when I took the ice for my freestyle tests. But I was old enough to know that I wasn't supposed to choose a men's skater as my idol, even one as terrific as Browning.
Decades later, Browning remains my gold standard for figure skating. I mentally rate skaters on a scale of one to Browning. (This doesn't always correlate with my favorites; I am quick to admit that of the current men, Javier Fernandez is by far the Browning-est.) He's why I emphasize showmanship and artistic versatility, and why I get so annoyed when skaters sacrifice performance quality to raise their technical difficulty. Browning was the only guy landing a quad in the late '80s, and he was also the men's skater most invested in interpreting his music and connecting with his audience. He wasn't just proof that an athlete could do both, but proof that if an athlete wasn't doing both, that athlete was fundamentally less accomplished in the sport.
Read the rest at Sarah Explains the Finer Sports
It was all a lie. I wanted to be Kurt Browning. As cool as triple axels were, quadruple toe loops were even cooler. I wanted to wear a suave tux and make people laugh; I wanted to flash a confident smile and melt the judges' hearts when I took the ice for my freestyle tests. But I was old enough to know that I wasn't supposed to choose a men's skater as my idol, even one as terrific as Browning.
Decades later, Browning remains my gold standard for figure skating. I mentally rate skaters on a scale of one to Browning. (This doesn't always correlate with my favorites; I am quick to admit that of the current men, Javier Fernandez is by far the Browning-est.) He's why I emphasize showmanship and artistic versatility, and why I get so annoyed when skaters sacrifice performance quality to raise their technical difficulty. Browning was the only guy landing a quad in the late '80s, and he was also the men's skater most invested in interpreting his music and connecting with his audience. He wasn't just proof that an athlete could do both, but proof that if an athlete wasn't doing both, that athlete was fundamentally less accomplished in the sport.
Click to viewRead the rest at Sarah Explains the Finer Sports