Sasha
Cohen
(1984 - )
Alexandra Pauline "Sasha" Cohen (born October 26, 1984) is an American figure skater. She is the reigning US National Champion and silver medalist at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Biography
Cohen was born in Westwood, California, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Her mother, Galina Feldman, is a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine and a former ballerina; her father, Roger Cohen, is a Jewish American business consultant who used to practice law. Sasha is the Russian nickname for Alexandra. A gymnast from an early age, Cohen switched to figure skating when she was seven years old.
Career summary
Cohen competed at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, finishing 4th. Her best season was 2003–2004, when she took gold at three Grand Prix events and silver at both the US National Championships and the World Championships. She withdrew from the 2004 Grand Prix events due to a recurring back injury, but returned to place 2nd at the 2005 US National Championships in Portland, Oregon, and the World Championships in Moscow, Russia.
Cohen started her Olympic season by placing 1st at the Campbell's International Figure Skating Challenge. Soon after she withdrew from Skate America due to a hip injury. She came back strong with a 2nd place finish at Trophée Eric Bompard.
In 2006, Cohen overcame a severe flu to capture her first US National Championship gold medal. With this victory Cohen secured a place on the US Olympic team for the 2006 Winter Olympics, a spot made official on January 14 of that year by the United States Figure Skating Association.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Cohen stood in 1st after the short program, leading Russia's Irina Slutskaya by a mere .03 points. In the long program, Cohen fell on a jump and had her hands down on a second, ending up behind Shizuka Arakawa of Japan by 7.98 points. Still, she earned 1.92 more points overall to edge Slutskaya for the silver, Cohen's first Olympic medal.
A month later at the 2006 World Championships in Calgary, Canada, Cohen once more stood in 1st place going into the free skate, only to fail to skate cleanly (landing just three clean triple jumps in the entire program) and lose out on a gold medal; she hung on to win the bronze but finished almost ten points behind her teammate, gold medalist Kimmie Meissner. Despite her flawed free skate, Cohen displayed strong artistry and picked up level fours on all her spins and her spiral sequence. Her program components score of 61.35 was the highest of the night.
During April 2006, Cohen started the Champions on Ice tour, participated in the Second Annual "Skating with the Stars, Under the Stars" Gala in Central Park and perfomed in the Marshalls US Figure Skating International Showcase. On April 15, 2006, Cohen announced that she intends to compete into the 2010 season and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She said via her official website, "I will decide after the COI Tour how much skating and what events I will do next season."
Coaching changes
Cohen was coached by John Nicks until the summer of 2002, when she relocated to Simsbury, Connecticut, to train with Russian coach Tatiana Tarasova, who choreographed Cohen's famous Swan Lake program and upgraded her footwork. Under Tarasova's coaching, Cohen landed her first triple-triple combination in competition, a triple lutz-triple toe. She changed coaches again in January 2004 to Robin Wagner (who coached Sarah Hughes to Olympic gold), in Hackensack, New Jersey. In December 2004, Cohen returned to California to work with her original coach, John Nicks, who trained her to compete in the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. Nicks, who is very knowlegable on the Code of Points system, helped Cohen increase the difficulty of her spins and spirals, as well as her jumps, to maximize her performances under the new system.
Skating trademarks
Cohen is known for being one of the most polished skaters of her time, though her critics say she has never skated two clean programs in a row. Her childhood training as a gymnast allows her to bring an impressive degree of flexibility to the sport, evident in her spiral sequences and spins. Cohen worked on a quadruple salchow, which she had landed 10-20% of the time in practice in her younger years, including the 2001 Skate America warmups. However, Cohen abandoned the pursuit of the quad in hopes of becoming a more well-rounded skater. During the 2002-2003 season she performed a difficult triple toe/half loop/triple salchow combination in her long programs. More recently she has added the Biellmann spin to her repertoire.
Courtesy of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Cohen