Cohen comes to rescue of U.S. women’s figure skating

As baseball’s biggest boppers continue to be spattered with the results of their own drug tests, the sport casts a longing look at its past for a rescue party.

Alas, Ken Griffey Jr. is Mendoza flat-lining in Seattle, apparently the result of – and what a concept – aging naturally. Any other sluggers regarded as untainted are so far removed from the game that they aren’t even suiting up for old-timers games anymore.

This is where figure skating has it all over the grand old game, and shoot me if I ever type that sentence again.

The Sequined Pastime is in the tank, or so we’re told by the Sequined Press, because America is fresh out of teenage ice princesses with the moves and moxie to overcome the latest Asian wave. And if America doesn’t care, it doesn’t count, right?

But no problem-o.

With the Olympics looming – a North American Olympics, at that – Sasha Cohen submitted her paperwork on Friday to unretire at the ripe old skating age of 24.

Nowhere in Skateworld was this news greeted with louder huzzahs than at the headquarters of the 2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships here in Spokane, where not only do tickets need to be sold for next January’s Axelfest but $600,000 in sponsorship must be found to make up for the tab that the Legislature, with remarkable and laudable restraint, decided not to pick up.

Cohen might get someone – a husband with a birthday to buy for or a CEO with marketing to do – to reach for his checkbook.

Alissa Czisny, not so much.

Besides, Cohen owed Spokane one. It was before the city staged its first U.S. championships back in 2007 that she decided to put her competitive career on hold. She’s logged lots of miles with the Smucker’s show tour, but has not laced ’em up with spite in her spirals since the 2006 World Championships. Spokane did not particularly suffer her absence – Kimmie Meissner, then the reigning world champ, provided some star power. But you can’t find that star with the Hubble anymore.

A cynic might suggest that the sinkhole which the U.S. women have tumbled down is the main motivation behind Cohen’s return, but she insists it’s about her, not anyone else.

But bad is bad. The U.S. will have just two slots open for the ladies in Vancouver after Rachael Flatt and Czisny managed just fifth and 11th at this year’s worlds – the first time that’s happened in an Olympic year since the great Nancy-and-Tonya melodrama of 1994.

“Not competing for the last three years, I realized how much I missed competitive skating and felt like I had one more Olympics in me,” said Cohen, who won silver at Turin in 2006.

“No one’s dominating (in the U.S.) right now, but that wasn’t factored into my decision. In the world, it’s a very strong stage right now. Countries go through periods like this. Japan is very dominant and has strong skaters right now. It’s just kind of the nature of life.”

And athletes coming out of retirement is the nature of sports, although Cohen was clear back in 2007 that she hadn’t retired. If she was a bit coy about a timeline or her true intentions, there was a reason for that.

“Different things in life made me realize I had a special spot in skating – that there was some purpose for me,” she said. “It’s quite a big undertaking to want to compete again, and that’s why I wanted to wait so long (to announce it). I hate being a person who talks and talks and doesn’t act. Coming up to the time where it was time to make a decision, I felt stronger about it every day.

“This is my last chance to do something like this and I didn’t want to let it pass by.”

Cohen isn’t just reaching back. She’s taking on as a coach the demanding Rafael Arutunian, who has worked with both Michelle Kwan and Japanese wunderkind Mao Asuda. That’s a signal that she knows she can’t simply count on her impeccable spirals but must attempt – and succeed – at enough triple jumps to keep up with the teenagers.

Which, of course, is the gold-medal question.

Comebacks like Cohen’s often go unrequited even for the most transcendent athletes – Michael Jordan, white courtesy phone – and while she’s not exactly a doddering old lady, the three years she missed might as well be a generation in skating. The long-ago returns of Brian Boitano (1988) and Viktor Petrenko (1992) were cited Friday as examples of unrequited comebacks.

“If you look back, (Ekaterina) Gordeeva and (Sergei) Grinkov came back in 1994 and won, so it’s different for everyone,” she insisted. “A fear of failure isn’t going to stop me from trying.

“(Competition) is absolutely nerve-wracking but it’s also the most exhilarating feeling of my life. I’d regret it so much if I didn’t come back and challenge myself to see what I could do.”

So, yes, there is the possibility this will end badly.

But U.S. women’s skating is already there, isn’t it?