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Gold Medal Hopes in Olympic Ladies Competition

Sasha Cohen Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images Sport

2006 Olympic Winter Games Photos, News and Blogs

(2/21/06) - Before the Olympic Winter Games, Russia was an odds-on favorite for the first figure skating medal sweep in the history of the Olympic Winter Games. While that feat is still in the realm of possibility, there's a pretty major roadblock in the way – U.S. champion Sasha Cohen.

Cohen danced her way through her “Dark Eyes” short program to take the lead in the short program Tuesday night at the Palavela Arena in Torino, Italy. Her margin is slim – just three one-hundredths of a point ahead of second-place finisher Irina Slutskaya, but it's enough to give her confidence heading into Thursday's free skate.

“It's wonderful,” Cohen said. “First of all to it means so much to skate well, and then to be rewarded on top of that is icing on the cake. Especially coming in second to Irina last year at Worlds, it meant a lot to be on top.”

Cohen and Slutskaya switched placements between technical elements and program component marks, with Cohen winning the components score and Slutskaya taking the technical.

Cohen received negative grades of execution (GOEs) on her opening triple Lutz-double toe combination and on her double Axel, in which she skidded on the landing. She received two coveted positive 3 GOEs on her spiral step sequence.

“I definitely don't feel flawless,” she said. “I felt like it was strong, and I made it happen. But it definitely wasn't flawless.”

Technically maybe not flawless, but she showed a spark and appeal to the audience that has been lacking in some performances. Her smile lit up the arena to start the program, and she expressed the gypsy flair well in her straight line step sequence.

“This is a really fun program,” she said. “It's a gypsy number … very seductive and playful. It's about getting involved with the audience, the judges. That's what I tried to do. I love the program, and when I compete and have people watching I love the attention. I feel my performance kicks up a notch.”

Slutskaya was all about technical prowess, with only one element, her spiral step sequence, graded at level 3.

“The first emotions are good,” she said. “I think I began well. I'm just a little bit upset about the second score (program components) because I used to get a better score (in the second) than in the first one. But today it was the opposite.”

Third place and still in the gold medal hunt is former World champion Shizuka Arakawa of Japan with 66.02 points. Sixteen-year-old Kimmie Meissner skated second and made her score of 59.40 hold up well against later competitors. She was one of only two competitors to land a triple-triple combination (the other was Elene Gedevanishvili of Georgia), but she was hurt by a level 2 on her spiral step sequence and lower program component scores.

“I think the judges know what they're doing, so what I put out there is what they scored me on,” said the fifth-place Meissner of her program components score. “I might have some things to work on, but I think the judges did a good job.”

The third American, Emily Hughes, also skated a clean program that has her in seventh place with 57.08 points. She had a minor problem on her serpentine step sequence but otherwise skated cleanly. Hughes was a last-minute replacement for the injured Michelle Kwan.

“It was just great to do a clean program at my first Olympics, and only finding out a little over a week ago that I was coming here,” she said. “To have that experience of feeling such elation after the program was great.”

Both Japan and the United States have three skaters in the top 10 after the short program. The figure skating competition concludes with the ladies free skate Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m.