Cohen drops some pixie dust on skating, saves grit for herself

So this is the evolution of ladies skating in the United States – from breathtaking to breath-releasing.

This is what will make the final night of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships a triumph for the home team: Sasha Cohen not falling down.

Maybe there are stops along the timeline of every sport where you have no choice but to just cling to what you have, or even what you’ve had. Maybe in reaching for the stars, occasionally you have reach back over your shoulder.

But while it was a captivating flashback to have Tom Watson come within a blade of bentgrass of winning the U.S. Open last summer, the PGA doesn’t need to dip into the Champions Tour for a star attraction – though if Tiger Woods decides to stay and become the head pro at the Mississippi sex clinic where he’s holed up, that could be a possibility.

And yet so far, the intrigue and drama in the Pixie Flight at the Spokane Arena has amounted to A) whether Cohen would show up and B) whether she’ll stay up.

At 25, she is eight years older than the average of the other five skaters in tonight’s final group in the ladies free skate. And in skating, those are dog years.

That’s why when Cohen made it through her short program Thursday not just upright, but displaying at least a smidgen of her old style and spunk, the sigh at the end of her presentation didn’t necessarily come from her but from the community of American skating.

It hardly mattered that she came out of the night in second place, a skosh behind 16-year-old Mirai Nagasu and even less ahead of 17-year-old Rachael Flatt. Cohen’s credits – three world championship medals and an Olympic silver in 2006 – seem to make her the only relevant American threat to the Asian wunderkinds in Vancouver.

Not that she professes even a fleeting concern with that.

“I’m not even there,” she insisted. “To me, the accomplishment is being here.”

Uh, OK, but her Olympic medal is the only reason she is. That and her entry form got her in, as she’d been on a three-year furlough from competition until hunting down her old coach, John Nicks, and lacing them up again. Since she had no inclination to return before now, it seems a tad disingenuous to say the Olympics weren’t at the heart of the matter.

“I’ve been to two Olympics,” Cohen said. “I’d love to go a third time, but it’s not the end-all in my life.”

The focus-on-the-journey theme is a handy antidote for failure, but you don’t come back from a three-year layoff unless there’s some business unfinished. Of the skaters who won the previous Olympic ladies golds, Tara Lipinski jumped to the ice shows immediately and Sarah Hughes stuck it out only another season. Maybe Cohen is more in love with competition than they were, or maybe her medal isn’t the right color.

Or maybe she’d just like to get through one major competition having skated cleanly in both the short and long programs. That’s been her singular undoing in an international career in which she’s been good, but never quite good enough.

“I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye,” Cohen offered.

Whatever her motivation, it’s undeniable that we find comebacks compelling, the melodrama generated by a Lance Armstrong or a Brett Favre being a guilty pleasure. Because Cohen cited tendinitis and pulled out of the two Grand Prix events she’d planned to skate this year, there was considerable skepticism that this one was for real. Even Nicks, with whom Cohen has had a topsy-turvy relationship over the years, harbored some doubts early, until he saw her fight through some nasty spills. But just the fact that she turned to Nicks in the first place should have sent some signal.

“I’ve never been a complacent person,” she said. “I’m always trying to learn new things from different coaches. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m smart enough to recognize when something isn’t quite working for me. At that point, you go back to what works for you.”

And you draw on a well of faith even if your friends are telling you, “No one thinks you’re going.”

“When I was injured and skating awful, you want to be here, but you are how you feel each day,” Cohen said. “I believed in myself because I had some great moments and great days in training, and I was able to keep putting them together and get confidence enough to be here.”

In that respect, perhaps just being here is a triumph. Chances are, though, she’d trade it for a bigger one tonight.