Sasha Cohen At 9 Years Old

[IDLERACER]

[CENTER]I'm not sure if this is old news or not, but somebody has loaded a video from 14 years ago of Sasha Cohen performing at what looks like, if I'm not mistaken, the Pasadena ice rink. Even back then, she looked a couple of years younger than she actually was.

Click HERE [/CENTER]

[kandidy]

Wow, she was so cute.

[Tinymavy15]

someone posted this a few weeks ago.

Funny how diffrent she looked. and you never can tell at that age who will become a champion. She skated like anyother girl at her level then!

[Dee4707]

Idleracer, thanks for posting that, I loved it. I loved the ending.

Dee

[mizu_iro]

Certainly makes Mao at 10 years old look much more impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeXlp...eature=related

[IDLERACER]

[CENTER]

Certainly makes Mao at 10 years old look much more impressive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeXlp...eature=related

Yeah, HERE is Michelle Kwan at 11 and HERE is Gordeeva & Grinkov at ages 12 and 16, although she looks alot younger. It's interesting how girls who are unusually small as pre-teens tend to remain diminutive until their early 20s. [/CENTER]

[bekalc]

Certainly makes Mao at 10 years old look much more impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeXlp...eature=related

Sasha started skating at a much older age then many.

[NansXOXOX]

WOW! Mao had good speed and edges even at a young age.

[Tinymavy15]

Sasha started skating at a much older age then many.

not really. she started at 7 and I think Mao started at 5 or so.

[antmanb]

not really. she started at 7 and I think Mao started at 5 or so.

In that case the videos posted are the difference of Mao skating after 5 years compared to Sasha's 2. Not very comparable.

Ant

[Fossi]

I recognize some of the moves from Sasha. Wow. Michelle and Mao were amazing in their clips. Worlds ahead of Sasha.

[Medusa]

Worlds ahead of Sasha.

Isn't it somehow strange to look at videos and decide who looked better at what age? Miki Ando didn't start skating till she was 9 (I guess), Oda till he was 8 or something, Weir till he was 12 and Kevin vdPerren till he was 10. So I guess these four would have looked pretty stupid at the age of 9 in comparision to Cohen at the age of 9.

And some need more time to land the big jumps, or to look really confident on ice - and some don't. I don't think it says much about the success they will experience later in their career (it would be nice to have a statistic on that: how many highly talented kids turn out to be really better than the ones who took their time to stand out?). Wasn't Buttle a late bloomer with the jumps etc.? Does anybody care now, after he won Worlds, how long he needed to land the 3A? Joubert didn't look too promising at age 15 and 16 (15th at Junior Worlds etc.), 2 years later he bursts on the senior scene with a Bronze at his very first senior international competition (Europeans).


Plus, this admiration-thingy towards baby-athletes always makes me cringe, I can't even listen to Dick Button's commentary e.g. when he commented on a young Kwan, Naomi Nari Nam, Tara Lipinski, Mao Asada in 2005... Didn't he once say "Thanks for the little girls" or something like that?

And so what if Cohen didn't look too impressive at the age of 9 - at age 21 she was good enough for silver at Olympics, isn't that all that counts?

[AwesomeIce]

She was pretty unspectacular at that age. Its funny sometimes how the little kids that look so promising so very often end up being no better than average, and then there's the kids you never would have thought would go very far, and in the end they are the ones up on the podium.

[Dee4707]

Isn't it somehow strange to look at videos and decide who looked better at what age?

I couldn't agree more!!

Dee

[babyoscar]

Johnny Weir started skating at age 12.