Here's looking at you, kid: As time goes by, it becomes clear that the '96 Worlds would never have arrived in Edmonton if it wasn't for Kurt Browning ...

Copyright 1996 Southam Inc.

The trophy case in the village arena tells you a lot about the place. Here is a black and white blowup of Peter Van Der Meer, "1923 Canadian Bucking Horse Champion, Calgary Stampede." And over here is a signed photo of Gerald Willsie, 1989 Canadian steer wrestling champion.

The fellow showing you around has been a rodeo pickup man himself, one of those cowboys you see riding alongside the bronc riders, letting them slip off their mounts after the eight seconds is over. He is 73-year-old Dewey Browning.

He shows you a picture of a seven-year-old boy wearing a skunk costume in the ice carnival at Caroline, Alta., about 150 kilometres southwest of Edmonton. He shows you a peewee hockey jacket with "Kurt" on the sleeve and "Staben's Backhoe Service" on the chest.

You look at the weathered cowboy, you look at the pictures of his youngest son, then and now. It seems unfathomable.

"It came on us so gradual, we kind of got used to it," he says.

The boy was an accident, of course. Dewey and Neva Browning were in their 40s when he was born. They would have been happy to have two kids, and leave it at that.

But he was the best accident that ever happened to figure skating in Alberta, or Canada.

Without Kurt Browning, is there any question there'd be no 1996 world figure skating championships in Edmonton, no 16,000 spectators a night, no knockout television ratings? Does anyone doubt the largest-grossing figure skating competition ever would be happening somewhere else?

He didn't invent the sport in these parts, but it was Ice Capades once a year and a sparse few Canadian medal contenders before him.

Tonight, when the four-time world champion skates in the opening ceremonies, is a good time to consider what we owe the 29-year-old athlete and entertainer whose talent, timing and marketability changed the face of the sport.

"And how much the CFSA owes Kurt Browning, too," says David Dore, the director general of the Canadian Figure Skating Association.

"The timing was just right," Dore said recently. "With television and the explosion of the sport's popularity, we all capitalized on this wonderful person. And his parents -- the whole story. It was almost too good to be true.

"Actually, Brian Orser paved a lot of roads, became the first personality you sort of learned to empathize with, to go up and down with."

Orser's late-1980s duel with American Brian Boitano, culminating in one of the great head-to-head skates of all time at the Calgary Olympics, was captivating stuff. Millions who'd never witnessed this kind of drama out of an Olympics had their appetites whetted by Boitano's absolute perfection and the pathos of Orser's valiant silver medal.

"But then," said Dore, "out of nowhere, almost, came this immensely talented skater, Kurt Browning who set his own road and was just so real, who always knew how to say the right thing, how to seize the moment . . ."

"What he allowed the sport to do was move from Saturday afternoon to prime time," said Browning's agent, Kevin Albrecht of International Management Group. "From a live audience perspective, he moved it from . . . 5,000-seat buildings to 18,000.

"But he also brought a lot of media people who had not covered figure skating before, the major columnists across the country who were used to writing hockey and football. He moved the sport from third or fourth page of the sports section to the front page. And that's a lot."

So was being voted Canada's male athlete of the year, beating out hockey players such as Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

"It was great fun," Browning said when reached at a Stars On Ice tour stop in the U.S. "I can't believe how lucky we were. Success breeds success. It seems like when I started going to Worlds and watched Brian Orser win, it had a huge impact on me thinking I could do it."

Browning is the only skater to have won world titles both with and without compulsory figures.

But his adaptability wasn't limited to the ice. Early on, in his association with Mike Barnett's CorpSport -- which signed on as agent shortly after Barnett and his star client, Gretzky, saw Browning perform at the Calgary Olympics -- Browning saw the untapped commercial potential that lay there for figure skating. And Barnett, eventually, was convinced his skater could start prying those dollars loose.

"As far as the business end, I made a great decision when I was young not to give the CFSA the total run of my career, and to go ahead and keep my agent even though they told me not to," said Browning.

"CorpSport, which became part of IMG, just came into figure skating with a different set of rules. They were like, 'Well, why can't these things be done?' They treated it like skiing. Can't ski without sponsors."

Ultimately, Kurt Browning's charisma, energy, humor and crowd appeal put him at a level no other skater in Canadian history ever achieved. He became wealthy.

And Neva Browning, sitting in her kitchen 10 kilometres west of the sign that says "Village of Caroline, Kurt Browning Country," is still stuffing envelopes with autographed pictures, sending them to fans of the man she still sometimes calls "my little boy."

"If these people . . . get something back and they're proud of it and show it off to their friends, those people might want to go see him when his show comes to town. If the shows don't put people in the seats, you know, Kurt Browning doesn't have a job."