No easy road to skating gold for Cohen (negative article) | Golden Skate

No easy road to skating gold for Cohen (negative article)

Kwanford Wife

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Articles on elite skaters are always so interesting... Even when they are right, its still inaccurate, still missing the point. Ho hum...
 

R.D.

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
The one mistake that stood out was that he said she "skipped" the Grand Prix events. She actually did do one of them.

The article is missing a few facts but I think he's got the right idea, actually. It's definitely not in her favor.
 

JonnyCoop

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 28, 2003
I get extremely tired of these male reporters who think that just because they're covering a sport geared toward women, that it gives them some license to get catty and snippy. That line about not removing the medal because it might be too much work was beyond rude. I'd like to see HIM get out there on a pair of skates and try to twist himself into the positions she can manage to get into effortlessly.

Last week in another thread I made a comment that to hear some people talk, you'd think Sasha spends 75% of her average long program on her face or on her butt and by the sound of some of these commentaries on all her mistakes, etc, one would be hard pressed, based on those, to figure out how in the world she ever even made it into the top 10 at Nationals. Sasha is more than aware that she has a problem in delivering a perfectly clean long program, and perhaps she would have delivered one a long time ago if people would stop harping on it. I personally feel one of these days, she is going to deliver that flawless long program but I wonder if that'll even be good enough for the media.

But the real kicker is -- this story was put out by MSNBC. And NBC is carrying the Olympics. And I'm sure they'll want all kinds of access to her during the Games. It's just not polite to do a hatchet job on someone you're going to want to interview quite a bit. If they'd pulled this on Tara Lipinski, the Lipinski camp would have told NBC to stick all their interview requests, which they almost did to CBS when they thought CBS was going to get snide in a profile.
 

Doggygirl

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 18, 2003
When Mr. Dr. quit his job to start our business, he went to the target range with his (legal) hand gun. He shot a zillion holes in the paper target. That paper hangs in our garage as a reminder of why we don't want to be back in corporate life.

Mr. Doggy's paper target hanging in the garage has fewer holes than this story, which is hard to believe. I don't even know where to start, so I'm not going to even try, at least not now.

DG
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
I didn't find it that negative. He admires so much of her skating in the whole article. Much of what he said is gleaned from bits and pieces he read elsewhere. I suspect he's on the MSNBC payroll and this was his assignment for the Olys.

Joe
 

tarotx

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 30, 2005
Just becasue some ones doesn't have the work ethic of Michelle doesn't make one lazy. Sasha skated at campbells. Sasha wasn't exactly healthy when Skate America came around so she skiped the event but she did go to TEB where she placed 2nd behind Mao. Sasha skated at Marshalls and she skated at Nationals. She did okay at all her events this season. Last season she was world silver medalist. She worked hard to not land on her but in the short and long programs.

Sasha has had practice issues-but it wasn't that she was lazy. She just believed that if she landed one of all her elements in a practice she had a good practice. She has admitted that she hasn't been the best student skater. She has always worked her *** off doing off ice work. I don't think Sasha really likes being under a coach's thumb. She never has been. But that doesn't make her lazy.

Sasha's issues are not that she's lazy or that she breaks the rules (Where the hell did that come from?). It's not really even that she doesn't have the best edges. The cause of most of Sasha's problems is that she has concentration issues. Which is probably partly caused by the fact that she doesn't do a a lot of run throughs but mostly because she's an inward skater and when she has a slight mis she stops feeling and starts thinking and it throws her programs off. Johnny is similar actually. At Nationals this year Sasha was off on her first flip so she had to throw the 2toe on the back of her 2nd flip and she couldn't get focused again in time to land her sequence cleanly. Which didn't involve a 3loop-it was a 3toe.
 

euterpe

Medalist
Joined
Sep 4, 2003
The article never mentioned that both Tarasova and Robin Wagner complained about Sasha's "work ethic". The truth is Sasha has many interests outside skating and has never been dedicated to training hard. Last season, she sat out the GP with a back injury that was probably the result of having taken the summer off, then tried to get back in shape by cramming all the hard training into a few weeks. But I don't think Sasha's mid-FS 'bobbles' have much to do with the lack of training. I think that they are due more to a combination of lack of concentration and competition nerves.

Sasha's reluctance to train hard is one of the reasons why I think she is likely to retire from eligible skating this season.
 
S

SkateFan4Life

Guest
Oh, well, he's entitled to his opinion. Why should we give two hoots what he has to say, anyway?

I hope Sasha will silence all of the naysayers with two outstanding programs in Torino!
 

Piel

On Edge
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 27, 2003
I think that Sasha having interests outside of skating is a good thing. It doesn't mean that she is any less serious about her skating. Come the end of her skating career she will probably be a lot happier than the ones who only think about skating.
 

kyla2

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 24, 2004
Imo

He's a mean spirited jerk when he wants to be isn't he? What a completely uncalled for article. I guess that's what you do when you feel like you're not getting enough attention from the editors.
 
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
I liked the part about having "dumped a trail of coaches" along the way. She's dumped how many, two? Three if you count Nicks. Hardly Bobekian.

Bondy apparently wrote a pro-Kwan piece (linked next to article). Seems you can't be a fan of one without hating the other. He rags on Sasha for "skipping" the GP, but sort of fails to mention that so did his little princess.:rolleye:

Jerk.
 

orchid

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
Sasha, herself, said she re-evaluated her thinking/approach to training and performances following TEB.
I'm not gonna dig for the quote.

However, she/more likely Mr, Nicks, changed her training. One might read into this, she recognizes , hmmm, let's. call it .. gaps in practices V performance, and at last has made a change.
 

Longhornliz

Final Flight
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
I read this last night along with ALL of the content available on the nbc olympics page... can you say bored and too much time on your hands? I actually didnt find this artical as frustrating as others I have read that were negative. I was really flabergasted by the the negative article on kwan that ran in the houston chronicle... but found this one to be very well crafted and even handed. He made the same annoying factual errors though. Its as if the skating "beat" isnt being taken seriously or rather as seriously as other more mainstream sports and isnt getting the depth of research that a writer would normally allow. I'm pro sasha and pro kwan, but for some reason I felt like this author was pretty much right on. He may have been a nay sayer of cohen for gold, but he definately had glowing remarks on her skills.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
No, it is not a good article at all. The tone of the writing is intended not to tell the reader anything of interest about the subject (Sasha), but rather to attract attention to what a clever fellow the writer is.

"You have to put in the work, the jumps, the dreary mornings in empty ice rinks. Sasha Cohen has heard that her entire life, and the many coaches she dumped along the way would quietly grump afterward that this girl owned all the talent in the world - but lacked the staying power.

And so, like bad clockwork, Cohen would falter around the second or third minute of her long program. She wasn't fit enough, wasn't practiced enough, to pull off the whole routine. She'd skate in her own world, ignore the rules, nearly collide with other athletes in warm-ups...."

This is ridiculous. Dumping and grumping, bad clockwork, wasn't fit enough, ignore the rules -- give me a break, a**hole.
 

R.D.

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
You're right, MM. It IS poorly written. And he got facts wrong. But if one looks past all that (if they can), one can see that his main point is that Cohen is going to have a hard time getting the gold at this year's Olympics. That's where I agree with him. Also, there is truth behind where he insinuates Cohen has had practice issues, because she said so herself.
 

Kwanford Wife

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Mathman said:
No, it is not a good article at all. The tone of the writing is intended not to tell the reader anything of interest about the subject (Sasha), but rather to attract attention to what a clever fellow the writer is.

"You have to put in the work, the jumps, the dreary mornings in empty ice rinks. Sasha Cohen has heard that her entire life, and the many coaches she dumped along the way would quietly grump afterward that this girl owned all the talent in the world - but lacked the staying power.

And so, like bad clockwork, Cohen would falter around the second or third minute of her long program. She wasn't fit enough, wasn't practiced enough, to pull off the whole routine. She'd skate in her own world, ignore the rules, nearly collide with other athletes in warm-ups...."

This is ridiculous. Dumping and grumping, bad clockwork, wasn't fit enough, ignore the rules -- give me a break, a**hole.

While I think the article sucks, I will say that I'm so happy to see that MM can get snarky with the rest of us... Yay MM! :bow:
 
Top