Browning poised to retain title

Kurt Browning, the Canadian holder of the men's figure skating title, assumed pole position in the world championships after the compulsories yesterday. True, he was beaten by Richard Zander, but the German, a figures specialist, is unlikely to be where it matters after the men's final on Thursday evening.

It was a taut struggle, which ought to be the subject of compulsory study by the hide-bound ice dance judges. Only one of the first five placings, Zander's, remained unchanged after the first figure and, significantly, Browning overhauled one of his two main challengers, Viktor Petrenko, of the Soviet Union, for second place. The other, Christopher Bowman, of the United States, was sixth, leaving him 1.6 points behind Browning and 1.2 behind Petrenko.

Steven Cousins, of Britain, was 25th, slaughtered unmercifully by Joan Noble, the British judge. She gave him 1.9 for the first mark and 2.1 for the second. Donna Gately, Cousins's trainer, tightened her lips afterwards and offered an icy ''no comment''.

The couples take the stage today, the ice dancers for their compulsories and the pairs for their original programme. Altogether there are 44 couples involved, though you might be forgiven for thinking that there was only one.

The electrifying performance of Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay in the European championships in Leningrad last month reverberated round the skating world, nowhere more strongly than in Canada. Isabelle and her brother, born of a French mother and a Canadian father, compete for France only because the Canadians failed to recognize their potential in their formative years.

The cognoscenti here, together with informed members of the public, are fascinated to see whether or not the Duchesnays will be given a better deal by the judges than in Leningrad.

There is one important new factor in the equation. The referee here will be Lawrence Demmy, once world champion himself, who publicly expressed his anger in Leningrad when the French couple were placed only third in the free-skating and the overall positions, and even fourth in the free dance, by the representatives of the Soviet Union and Hungary.

The referee has a powerful influence on these occasions and it will be surprising if the French-Canadian couple do not wind up second here to the holders, Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, of the Soviet Union, rather than third behind another couple from Moscow, couple, Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin. The luck of the draw has also fallen France's way. Neither the Soviet Union nor Hungary, whose compatriots just happen to be the Duchesnays principal opponent, has a judge on the panel.