Athletes - Sasha Cohen

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > Sasha Cohen

	Athletes - Sasha Cohen

Alexandra Pauline "Sasha" Cohen (born October 26 1984) is an American figure skater. She is the reigning United States National Champion and silver medalist at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Biography

Cohen was born in Westwood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Galina, is a Jewish-Russian 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 fourth. Her best season was 2003–04, when she took gold at three Grand Prix events and silver at both the U.S. National Championships and the World Championships. She withdrew from 2004 Grand Prix events due to a recurring back injury, but returned to place second at the 2005 US Nationals in Portland, Oregon, and World Figure Skating Championships in Moscow, Russia.

Cohen started her Olympic season by placing first 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 second place finish at Trophée Eric Bompard.

In 2006, Cohen overcame a severe flu to capture her first U.S. National Championship. With this victory Cohen secured a place on Team USA 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 Figure Skating Championships in Calgary, Canada, Cohen once more stood in first place going into the free skate, only to once more fail to skate cleanly (only landing 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 gold medalist Kimmie Meissner.

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. 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 has trained her to compete in the 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

Skating trademarks

Sasha 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 dexterity and flexibility to the sport. Sasha 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, Sasha abandoned the pursuit of the quad in hopes of becoming a more well-rounded skater. She dazzles audiences with her spiral sequences and spins, as well as an 'I-Spin' near the end of her programs, and hopes to be able to finally notch a World Figure Skating Championship title.

Future endeavors

Sasha will headline the Marshalls International Figure Skating Showcase to take place in Greenville, South Carolina on April 11, 2006.
During her recent guest appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," when interviewed backstage, she said that after her skating career is over, she would like to be a Hollywood actress. She said she "love the glamour of red carpet events", and that she "hope that next appearance on the show would be an actress instead."

Trivia

In 2005, Cohen released her autobiography Fire on Ice. The revised edition, which features her 2006 Olympic experiences, will be released on March 28, 2006.
Cohen understands and speaks some Russian.
During a Season 2 episode of Project Runway, the designers were challenged to design Sasha Cohen a skating outfit. The winning outfit would later be worn by her during one of her events.
Cohen wears a Kabbalah red string bracelet. According to Cohen, "I'm not deeply into Kabbalah, but I appreciate the principles of it, to ward off evil and not think negative thoughts about people."
Cohen graduated from Futures High School in Mission Viejo in 2002
At the 2006 Academy Awards, Sasha was a guest correspondent for Inside Edition. Of note from this experience was an encounter with Ben Stiller about having a part in a future comedy movie about figure skating, which she said she would enjoy thoroughly.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Sasha Cohen ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Sasha Cohen; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.