No Longer the Bridesmaid, Sasha Cohen Claims Gold in St. Louis
by Michelle Wojdyla  (St. Louis, Mo., 1/14/06) - Since 2000, Sasha Cohen (Orange County FSC) has been the bridesmaid at the State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Tonight in front of more than 13,000 at the
Savvis
Center in
St. Louis, Mo., Cohen skated off with the gold medal. In the past her nemesis has been Michelle Kwan. This week she was tackled by the flu, leaving her weakened, but she gained strength as the week progressed. Performing to “Romeo and Juliet,” Cohen showed she would not die in the end. With the exception of falling out on both ends of the triple toe-triple Salchow sequence, Cohen had a clean program that scored 134.03, giving her 199.18 total.
“I was a little tired, a little crooked,” Cohen said of the stumble. “I tried to hold onto it, but I was a little out of my circle.”
Cohen’s program opened with a triple Lutz-double toe-double loop combination that scored a GOE of 1.0 and 9.8 points total, her highest scoring element. Her spins and footwork all received level 3s and 4s, and she received multiple +3 GOEs. Her signature spiral that changed positions from skid to fan to 180 to half-Biellmann was given six +3 and three +2 from the nine judge panel.
“It was really nice, and I made it to the end and stayed on my feet,” Cohen said. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was good. After I started getting into it I started to enjoy it. There are always so many thoughts in the very beginning, and I just had to get them all settled down.”
Last year’s bronze medalist, Kimmie Meissner (Univ. of Delaware FSC), took home silver tonight with 171.04 points. After being fourth in the short, Meissner took advantage of the bonus for jumps landed in the second half of her program to Ottorino Respighl’s “Belkis, Queen of Sheba.” Although she fell on her double Axel (which was downgraded to a single), she landed two triple-triple combinations (triple flip-triple toe and triple Lutz-triple toe), although the first was flawed and received a -.86 GOE.
“Everything went pretty well until the very end,” Meissner said. “That was about the only thing that went wrong. The flip in the beginning was really shaky, but I was very determined to do a triple-triple tonight. I had that mistake in my short and I wanted to try and overcome that tonight. I was a little disappointed because I don’t generally miss a double Axel, but I was very pleased with my performance because I feel like I gave it everything I’ve got. I am sort of relieved. But if I could, I would like to do that last element again. Overall I am happy with nationals because I feel like I did the best I could.”
Emily Hughes (SC of New York) made her first appearance in the final group at the U.S. Championships. Skating to Glazunov’s “The Seasons” in robin’s egg blue, Hughes had an up and down free skate. A hard fall on her triple loop—downgraded to a double—and a double Salchow with a flip out, cost her 6.6 base points. Her 165.72 total was 5.32 behind Meissner.
“I think I just got ahead of myself and I tried to recover,” Hughes said. “I did the next jump.”
Hughes placed fourth in both the total element scores (52.40) and program component scores (55.21).
“The program was pretty good,” Hughes said. “I got over 100, which is one of the goals that I wanted to accomplish. It wasn’t as strong as yesterday, but it was stronger than the last time. I think that there is an amount of pressure because this is an Olympic year. This is only my second (senior) nationals, and I thought that this was a great experience for me for the future.”
Skating in the penultimate group, Katy Taylor (Texas Gulf Coast FSC) pulled up to fourth place in the free skate and fourth overall to win the pewter medal with her delicate program to “Forrest Gump Suite.” She had the third highest technical scores (56.21) and her spins and footwork received level 3s and 4s.
Bebe Liang (All Year FSC) fell to eighth in the free and fifth overall when she suffered back-to-back falls on her triple loop (downgraded to a double) and Lutz. She also popped her first Lutz into a single. Alissa Czisny (DetroitSC) had three falls and an underrotated triple loop that scored mostly –3 GOE. While she did receive level 4 on two spins and her spiral, it was not enough to overcome the jump problems.
Cohen, Meissner and Hughes have been named to the World Championship team in Calgary. Czisny, Taylor and Christine Zukowski (Univ. of Delaware FSC) will head to the World Junior Championships in Slovenia |