Lest we forget, it is the NY Times journalist Frank Litsky saying things such as “Cohen's move has succeeded like a dream” and "[Cohen] may become No. 1 in the world, maybe even the best female skater ever,” not Sasha or her team. And it is Litsky quoting Peggy and Dick and also Sasha, and as I know from experience, the quotes can get pretty funky. Sometimes when people get especially upset with these kinds of articles, and not just about Sasha, but any skater, they write posts as if the skater her or himself is saying all these things. IMO, most sports writing on figure skating is rather a hybrid of sports and entertainment writing because of the entertainment element of skating, not to mention the glitz and the sex appeal. I'm not saying all figure skating journalists do this or that I like it (I don't), but a lot of writers do it and mostly what we read are articles on US skaters. Especially since entertainment journalism became very popular in the late '80s and early '90s, skaters such as Kristi, Nancy, Michelle, Tara, Naomi Nari Nam, Sarah, and AP in addition to Sasha have had many of these same kinds of articles written about them. Before the '94 Olympics, the New York Times had a half page article just on Nancy Kerrigan's costumes and after the Olympics, there was a full review of what all the top ladies wore. So for me, I get frustrated with journalists who treat ladies skaters more as TV stars or beauty pageant contestants than as athletes.
With this article, for example, when you look at the actual number of lines focused on hype and fluff vs. Sasha’s actual skating (use the printer-friendly format) I counted 29 lines on what I’ll call “gush and fluff,” 13 lines on Sasha’s actual skating, and four lines on music, which is kind of in between, IMO. Relevant, but a little fluffy. To me, that’s the journalist’s fault, not the skater’s. But as a couple of people have said, these articles are for the casual fan, not techno fans like us
Although not ideal, I would like to have at least one serious sports article about a given figure skater for every two “gush and fluff” article out there. The PR people can try to get coverage, but they can’t control what the coverage will be like, which is as it should be. The problem is that most journalists write about skaters as if they were on the skater’s PR staff--especially when it’s a US skater.
OTOH, this kind of coverage is not limited to figure skating. Just look at Anna "Never Won a Tournament" Kournikova and the coverage she's gotten. In NY's Times Square there's a giant billboard of Kournikova in a sports bra advertisement with the ad line, "Only the ball should bounce." Yup, that’s serious sports, lol.
Ideally I would like to see the coverage of ladies figure skating in general go more hard sports and for example with Sasha, analyze her successes during the GP series and GPF as well as her problems at Nationals, Worlds, and Hersheys and leave out the fluff about Sasha’s name. We can get that in People magazine. From the NY Times I expect more about her skating. My annoyance is with this journalist and the figure skating media in general, not with Sasha and other skaters who all get articles like this. No doubt Sasha's PR team at least gave consent for the interviews and at most arranged for the article to be written. Nevertheless, it is the journalist and his editors who decide what will be in the article, not Sasha's PR team and certainly not Sasha.
As for endurance, here's why a 4 minute skating program is especially difficult. Those who know track and field know that the 400 meters is considered the most brutal race even though it lasts less than a minute. The 400 meters and the 4-minute figure skating LP are similar in that the athlete must depend mostly on the anaerobic glycolysis energy producing system, also known the lactic acid system, to produce the body’s energy molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in order to do the activity. If you’ll forgive me for getting a bit technical, the body produces energy (the ATP molecule) by converting sugar (glucose) into energy by using one of the body’s three energy producing systems: The immediate energy system (ATP-PC), which can produce extremely high energy for just a few seconds (this would be for jumping in figure skating); the short term energy system (glycolysis or anaerobic system), which can produce high energy for 30-60 seconds (this would be for a difficult footwork section or other similar high energy sections lasting 30-60 seconds); or the long term energy system (aerobic), which can produce medium-high energy for about 12-15 minutes (this system is used for some of the in-between choreography or stroking). As you can see from the figure skating examples, these systems don’t work exclusively of each other; they work together in order of time and work load so that, for example, in 90 seconds of maximal all out stroking, about the first 10% of the total work uses the ATP-PC system to produce energy; the next 10% to 55% of the total work uses the anaerobic glycolysis system; and the last 45% of the total work uses the aerobic system. As you get into the last 45%, however, the energy output starts to decline simply because the aerobic system cannot support the kind of maximal output the other systems can; in other words, you’re getting tired not only in general, but also biochemically. Even so, in this example we have 90 seconds of stroking as hard and as fast as you can. Compare this to just 30 seconds of maximal stroking and you get the ATP-PC system for the first 25% of total work (10% when it was 90 seconds); the anaerobic glycolysis system for the next 25% to 75% of total work (10%-55% during 90 sec); and the aerobic system for just the last 25% of total work (45% for 90 sec).
The point is, the amount of work each energy system contributes during maximal energy output depends very much on how long you’re trying to put out that maximal effort. Also, as you get into the aerobic system, you can work longer but only at a submaximal effort.
Back to the 4 minutes LP in figure skating. As Joe illustrated so well with Li, he looks like gold for the first two minutes, podium for the third minute, and like “What happened?” for the last minute. This is a classic failure of the anaerobic glycolysis system. Li comes bursting out of the blocks with an almost perfect quad in the first 10 seconds (ATP-PC), goes between using both the ATP-PC system and anaerobic glycolysis for jumps and his explosive moves and powerful stroking during the first two minutes very well; in the third minute his ATP-PC system is completely used up and he’s starting to flag because his anaerobic glycolysis system is not able to convert glucose to ATP and convert lactic acid to lactate dehydrogenase in the muscles fast enough to keep his power up; and in the last minute, Li’s legs no doubt feel like rubber because he has not trained properly in order for his anaerobic glycolysis system to rest and recover and rest and recover so that he remains strong throughout the entire program.
BTW, in the article on Sasha where she is quoted as saying, "I'm stronger now... Two weeks ago, for the first time, I finished my long program and said, 'Wow, I can breathe,'" I think she meant for the first time this year with this program, not the first time ever. Of course I can’t prove it because of the way it’s written, but here again is one of the problems with media coverage of figure skating--lack of clarity. In competition, one should be breathing hard at the end of a four-minute LP otherwise there wasn’t much to the program. It’s the skating that counts, which should look strong and IMO in Sasha’s case have two good hard jumps in the last minute.
As Joe also pointed out, and I think rightly and importantly so, I agree that it’s important that we not homogenize skaters. The kind of endurance problems Li has are not the kind Sasha has, IMO. Last season, with the exception of Campbell’s where Sasha did what I call her “drunken masters” final spin sequence, Cohen’s power has been strong throughout all four minutes of her programs. It’s the front-loading with the jumps and the lapses in what I call continuity that I think hurt her programs. I call it lack of continuity because she didn’t make the same mistake over and over; she made a different mistake in almost every competitive performance of her “Rach” LP. To me this indicates a problem more with motor skills than it does with endurance, although making sure you’re as strong as possible without overtraining goes hand in hand with having strong motor programs.
Those of you who were posting on GS last season may or may not recall when I posted the text from the interview Nancy Kerrigan did with Sasha on one of the Lifetime channel’s coverage of figure skating. Sasha discussed openly with Nancy that Tarasova did not believe in doing full runthroughs with jumps. Sasha said she would do a combination of things: runthroughs without jumps; the first half of the program with jumps, the second half without and vice versa; marking the program and doing just the jumps. Nancy was also very open with Sasha about saying, “I was never able to put a clean short and clean long together until after ‘93 Worlds [where Nancy’s LP was so bad she dropped from first after the short to fifth overall] my coach and I changed my training to include both full runthroughs with jumps and double runthroughs with jumps of my short and long programs.” Sasha was gracious, IMO, in thanking Nancy for her advice but saying that this was her coach’s approach, that so far it had been working well for her, and that she had improved her consistency over what she had when she was with Mr. Nicks, all of which was true at the time. Besides, what was she supposed to say? “Thanks, Nancy! I’m going to go tell Tatiana she’s all wrong right now!” Just kidding, though I do hope Nancy gave Sasha food for thought.
I also wrote at the end of the season that Sasha looked to me as if she had lost muscle mass compared to what she had with Nicks and that I didn’t think this was a good sign. She’s still very muscular, relatively speaking, but considering that those muscles are anaerobic energy-producing furnaces, a one kilogram difference in muscle mass can make a big difference in the anaerobic glycolysis system’s ability to produce energy at the end of a 4-minute LP. So I think the increase in off-ice training is a step in the right direction for Cohen.
However, I will echo other’s opinions and say as I said last season that even though every skater has unique needs, I think when it comes to the science of training there are certain standards for everyone. One of those is full and double runthroughs with jumps of both short and long programs. For some skaters, it’s mostly to build their endurance, the pure physiologic ability to do explosive skating for the full four or four and a half minutes. For other skaters, and I think Sasha is one of them, it’s mostly to hardwire their muscle memory so that every moment of the program, every edge and every transition becomes so deeply-ingrained into a successful series of motor programs that the skater could do it perfectly in her sleep.
Full and double runthroughs with jumps also helps the skater adapt to mistakes. There is always the X factor--hitting a rut, a bad patch of ice, a wonky landing. What full runthroughs do is prepare the skater for the unexpected. It is axiomatic that the more you practice a series of motor skills such as an alpha level figure skating LP in a way that is as much like competition conditions as possible, the better you will do in the actual competitive situation. This has been supported by research time and again with all kinds of activities. For example, when Tarasova was working with Ilia Kulik, she had him skate his competitive programs in as many performance situations as possible--in front of crowds, with the adrenaline, the unpredictable conditions, etc. He still had trouble with his LP the first year (IMO, due to trying to get used to the more complex choreography) and to a lesser extent in his second season with Tarasova (he had a back injury from about Sept. of ‘97 through the Olympics). But ultimately, he started peaking in about a six week period before the Olympics and as we know skated the most technically difficult Olympic program up to that point without a single mistake.
Which brings me to the other thing I would hope Tarasova and Cohen focus on this season: training periodization. This is just a fancy term for training so that you peak when you need to. Last season, Cohen started well in her GP events, especially Trophee Lalique, which I felt had both technique and feeling, but overall her competitors were not very strong and she had a couple of what I call “mental lapse” mistakes. Sasha had a ghastly LP at Nationals, a great performance at the GPF, and erratic performances at Worlds. So here again, we can’t even say she started strong and ended weak; IMO, she was inconsistently inconsistent. Thus I would like to see Cohen not push so hard during the fall GP series. Last season I think she felt she had to prove herself and justify her change to Tarasova. I hope that is completely out of her head now. IMO, the GP series should be approached as warm-up competitions for Nationals and Worlds. I’m not saying she shouldn’t try to win; it’s just that last season I felt she put so much energy into winning every GP competition that by the time Nationals and Worlds came around, she was overpressured and undertrained for Nats and plain worn out mentally and physically for Worlds. At the GPF, where the pressure was off, she skated extremely well.
So just read this thread, Sasha, and you’ll do great. We know everything
Rgirl
