Cohen takes spills at World Figure Skating Championships

CALGARY, Alberta – Looks as if Sasha Cohen might need another gift.

The U.S. champion, who said her silver medal in the Turin Olympics felt like a present, had a worse performance in qualifying at the World Figure Skating Championships on Wednesday night. After a superb start, she fell twice, stepped out of another jump and wound up third behind Japan’s Fumie Suguri and American teenager Kimmie Meissner.

It was the opposite of her struggles in the free skate in Italy, when she blew her shot for gold with two errors in the opening moments. The rest of her Olympic program was good enough to get second behind Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa, who is not in Calgary.

“Definitely, you have to be able to handle pressure and shake off any mistake and I kind of didn’t do that tonight,” said Cohen, winner of world silver the last two years. “I let that first mistake creep in. I have to be tougher.”

Cohen has a history of faltering in the free skate at major events. At least this disappointment came early, and she still has the short program Friday and the long on Saturday.

“Qualifying is worth only one-quarter,” she said. “I’ll just forget about it and start over Friday.”

Canadian champion Joannie Rochette thrilled the crowd earlier by winning her qualifying group with an elegant free skate that surpassed her performance at the Olympics.

Meissner and Suguri were in a near tie atop the late group, separated by .04. Suguri, the fourth-place finisher in Turin, had the slight edge, mainly because the 16-year-old Meissner struggled on her spins.

That’s understandable considering she’s barely recovered from a ruptured right ear drum suffered after finishing sixth in Italy.

“It was pretty gross, bleeding,” she said. “I couldn’t hear out of it for about a week. (Coach Pam Gregory) always said I have selected hearing … I had to stick all these things in my ear to make it like normal.”

After barely missing the medals stand in the Olympics, China’s Pang Qing and Tong Jian, ranked third in a nation where pairs are king, soared past countrymen Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao to win the world crown.

In a few months, Pang and Tong have gone from nearly splitting up to winning a world title.

“We had a very serious quarrel and Jian wanted to quit skating, he wanted to retire,” Qing said. “After the Grand Prix final (where they were sixth) we had a very good communication among us and the federation. Then we decided to have one month of good, hard training before the Olympics.”

Olympic silver medalists Zhang and Zhang, best remembered for coming back from her horrific fall in the Turin free skate, were second, followed by Russia’s Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov.

U.S. champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin rallied from sixth to fourth with a brilliant free program that didn’t feature their trademark, a clean throw triple axel.