Sasha falls, young and fair

I was able to believe when everything looked a little dark and gray.

Here are two of the best articles that appeared as people were taking in what had happened. The first also appears on Sasha Cohen's own site.

After Falling, She Rises And Shines

By Sally Jenkins, Washington Post, Friday, February 24, 2006

TURIN, Italy

There was no way to prettify it. Everyone fell. On such a night, when the Olympic gold medal in figure skating went to practically the only woman left standing, it seemed right that silver was awarded to the one who did the best job of getting back up again.
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Cohen fell in warmups. She fell on her first triple jump of the night, a lutz, when she lost her balance and landed on the back of her exquisite little red dress. And then she almost fell again, on a triple flip, when she staggered and put both hands on the ice. But somehow Cohen managed to steady herself on that ice, so scarred with skid marks, and stayed upright.

From that moment on, she began counterpunching. The triples began landing cleanly, like uppercuts. Triple loop. Triple flip. Triple toe. And then two more triple salchows. Five triple jumps in all, before she ended her four-minute free program, and skated to the sideboard where she mouthed something to her coach, John Nicks, that looked like, "I tried."

No one would land more triples among the final group of contenders. Not Arakawa, and not the bronze medalist Irina Slutskaya of Russia, who fell hard on her own triple flip, and also skipped other planned jumps.

"I was able to take one step at a time. I was able to believe when everything looked a little dark and gray," Cohen said.

The fact that skaters wear mock evening gowns makes it hard to appreciate what Cohen did. Maybe if her knees were bloody. Maybe if she wasn't such a royal figure in her garnet and gold dress, and maybe if the score of "Romeo and Juliet" hadn't been playing while she was working, it would be easier to convey the grit of her performance. Think of it this way: How often does a quarterback throw two interceptions in the first quarter but come back to throw three touchdowns and make the playoffs? What Cohen did was something similar.
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Cohen falls down, doesn't melt down

By Ron Judd, Seattle Times staff columnist

TURIN, Italy — Figure skating is a cold business, and if you let it, the chill can run right to the bone.

How cold? This cold:

Thursday night in Turin, in what could have and should have been the dramatic highlight of the XXth Winter Olympics, American ice princess Sasha Cohen skated onto the ice, sailed into her first jump, a triple lutz — and landed flat on her backside.

And in the stands at the Palavela, an entire section of fans stood up and cheered wildly, waving Russian flags. They jumped and hooted, delighting in Cohen's misfortune because they believed it would push their own skater, Irina Slutskaya, to the top of the medal stand, completing an unprecedented gold-medal sweep in figure skating for the Russians.

Their celebration continued when Cohen, 21, made her way to the opposite end of the rink and tried another jump, a triple flip, and slid out of it, reaching down with both hands to save herself from a fall.

All this happy back-slapping continued as Cohen, rattled by her inability to land triple jumps in her warmup, struggled to pull herself back together on the ice.

The Russians had read the same script as everybody else: Cohen lays down a short program as delicate and perfect as a summer wildflower, then goes out for the free skate and creates skunk cabbage.

It looked that way. Felt that way. Hurt that way.

Except two things have changed since the last time Cohen blew apart before the world's eyes. She grew up, learning not to let a hole in the ship turn into a full-fledged sinking. And the rules of her own game changed.

Both came into play over the next three minutes, as Cohen struggled to get back into something of a rhythm.

She landed a triple loop. Survived her combination spin. Stuck a triple flip and added a double to it for good measure. Got to a place where, she said, "the music carried me through."

The rest of her free skate was not vintage Cohen — the Sasha of the short program — but her footwork was solid, her spirals superior.

"I just took it one step at a time," she said. "I was able to believe when everything was dark and gray."

Believing translated into scoring in the judges' box, where skaters now are awarded points for everything they do — including the rotations of that botched triple flip, even though it wasn't landed cleanly.
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Undeserved? Not really, Cohen said.

"Ultimately, a medal just signifies what you've accomplished," she said.
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"Over the past four years I've changed as a person, because my focus is not on the medal," she said. "For me, it's the experience and the process."

She's been unleashing that cliché for months. But here, once and for all, you saw that she meant it. Saddled with sore legs, a painful groin muscle, chronic back problems and an aching ankle, she missed her Wednesday practice and received ultrasound treatment and gulped down painkillers before skating. But Cohen offered none of it as an excuse.
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She said she lives and skates now for those perfect, fleeting moments — not when the medals are handed out, but when the whole world stops spinning long enough to watch a figure skater mix grace and power the way only they can do. It is an instant, she explains, when skating "goes beyond an athletic event, and becomes an emotional experience."
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Sasha's silver gift

There's a fluidity to her grace that's unusual, that the others lacked; and there was heart in the way she continued after the disasterous start, and in the quality of her skating, again after that start. Her nervouseness when she began made that later control more compelling, gave it a narrative arc. There was none of the fizzing, upbeat triumph of her short programme, but there was something, and it was a gift, to her, to us, or just there.

Shizuka Arakawa won by a substantial margin but played it safe, trading planned jumps in for easier ones. She was beautiful, graceful, flexible. One of the BBC2 commentators gave her the thought "anything Sasha Cohen can do, I can do", and in a way that's true, if you take it abstractly, and leaning over backwards, curved backwards, in a spin or spiral (I forget which), or letting go of a leg while keeping it vertical, she was impressive at things I'm not sure Sasha Cohen can always equal. But still there's something missing.

Irina Slutskaya also resorted to easier jumps, and still fell, departed from her planned programme to try to make up for the problems, but ended third. Sasha, so sure she'd get nothing that she'd taken off her skating constume and had to put it back on, came second. She called it a gift.

A true gift is given without expecting anything in return, but she had worked for that. What she gave, though, was given without knowing, or expecting, that result.

The Southern on her short programme:

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Cohen's program was far from perfect, and it showed in technical marks lower than both Slutskaya and Arakawa. The landing of her double axel was curvy, and she had to fight to save it. The takeoff on her triple lutz could have been cleaner, but she made up for it in her connecting steps, transitions and spirals.

And no one sells a program better. Skating to "Dark Eyes," a Russian folk song, she was expressive for the entire program. She made eye contact with all of the judges, as if she was skating just for them.

When she stood at the edge of the rink, just before starting her straightline footwork, she gave a little shimmy of her shoulders and the crowd roared.

From there, to here:

The Baltimore Sun, Last one standing gets gold:

By Randy Harvey
Sun Reporter
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The silver here went to Cohen, who later called it "a gift.''

Not really. Cohen, 21, skated brilliantly for three minutes. Unfortunately for her, they were the final three of her four-minute program.
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But she fell twice in her warm-up before the final group of six skated their long programs and looked frightened, like a novice instead of the reigning U.S. champion. Nerves? Injuries?

Her night would get worse before it got better. She fell on the front end, the triple lutz, of her opening combination, then almost fell on her triple flip. But just as it seemed the crowd was about to witness a spectacular fall from grace, she began skating like, well, Cohen.

She inserted a combination she hadn't planned, a triple flip-double toe, then landed her next triple-triple.

More important was her expressiveness, her feel for the music from Romeo and Juliet. The judges gave her marks second-best only to Arakawa for artistry and the best marks for interpretation.

"It just wasn't my night,'' Cohen said. But only for one minute.
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Sasha Cohen before the long programme

Between the short programme and the long
Falls the shadow?

Expectations? MSNBC even asks Can Sasha Cohen Save the Olympics?, but also notices what ought to matter:

What Cohen has going for her is that she is a truly beautiful skater, a skater who loses herself in the character she plays and surrenders to the passion of her music. At her best she is a true enchantment

In USA Today, Mike Lopresti comments:

Which brings us to Sasha Cohen. Possibly the last obstacle to the Russian sweep. All 5-2 of her.

She had trouble sleeping Tuesday night, so she skipped practice Wednesday. The Alpiners have gone south, the speedskaters can't get along, and the only team the men's hockey team could beat was Kazakhstan. Sasha must save the republic. And she takes the day off.

When her practice slot came in the afternoon, the music for her routine was dutifully played, to empty ice. Her coach was there to swat the flies from the press.
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Now everyone waits for Thursday night. Nicks as much as anyone, ... "I spend all my time waiting for ladies," he said. "I waited for my sister, my mother, my girlfriend, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter.

"And Sasha."

So how has our ferocious defender against the Russian medal horde been doing in the athletes' village? "I feel funny," Cohen said, "because figure skaters are the only ones wearing makeup."

Slate: They All Fall Down Figure skating, the world's least-graceful sport.

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A dancer sweeps you away with her grace and flow and hides her sweat with a flourish. A world-class figure skater, on the other hand, pulls you into her own anxiety. She performs just barely above the limits of her skill, trying jumps you both know she can't always land.

The stress of these make-or-break moments overpowers whatever artistry a performance may have. What should be a choreographed composition becomes a series of near-impossible leaps strung together with idle tootling. Skaters fill up the dead time with gratuitous arm movements as they catch their breath and get in position for the next jump. Meanwhile, the announcers expect the worst.
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What about those effortless, eye-blurring spins? I've always found them to be the most compelling part of a skater's performance. Nobody ever falls while doing a spin, but they're thrilling and graceful nonetheless. ... but none of that matters in the end ... One of the highest-scoring spins you can possibly do—a perfectly executed flying change foot combination level four—is worth just five points. You could pick up that pocket change just by flubbing a triple axel.

Here's some help with distinguishing the many different jumps.

Playing piano in the dark

Myleene Klass, asked by the Independent on Sunday, 12 February 2006, about her favourite things:

Way to relax 'Turning off all the lights and playing piano in the dark. There's a song title in there.'

Word 'I love "onomatopoeia". And I like "acciaccatura" – it's a musical term. It's satisfying to say, and kind of onomatopoeic.