- Joined
- Dec 29, 2004
Dee4707 said:Her is............ Cupcake. Fess up RD, you know you love her.
Dee
Nope!! RD's favorite "her" is the Kwan... he loves her, he knows he does...
New NY Times article on Sasha
- Thread starter nymkfan51
- Start date
Nope!! RD's favorite "her" is the Kwan... he loves her, he knows he does...
Red Dog said:
I think some skaters have found that taking a big risk and failing in the new system is not worth the trouble -- this was the reason given for why Kimmie didn't try her triple axel at US Nationals. The points she would receive for landing it was not much more or possibly less than a 3/3, but if she tried and missed the TA, she would receive a big deduction (something like that) so it was safer to go the easier route.
Here's a question, are the deductions for a fall less if you fall while doing a more difficult jump?
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2004
millie said:
I didn't say anything about this year. I was simply replying to what someone said about SLC. Not that I think Sasha is ready now, but who knows, she might pull it all together.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2006
SkateFan4Life said:
And yet Sasha 'bombs' while still placing ahead of alot of other skaters-except for one or two. I think she's had tremendous success. How many of us can boast of World or National medals? Or of being Olympians? Very few of us I would say.
ladysarahchatto said:
You are forgetting that the US media acts as though "you win gold -- or you are a failure/loser" After all, how many skaters would kill to have Sasha's record? Or Michelle's? and one writer described both Nagano and SLC as "disasters" for Michelle, where she "crashed and burned" -- like two Oly medals are horrible.
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2004
attyfan said:
They're horrible to Michelle and Irina. Michelle has cashed in on that record over and over and over. I don't think Irina has the aura about her that a Buryrskya has so Irina is going to have it very tough, if she hasn't felt it already. LIke I said before, I hope Sasha says, "Okay, now, I need this for my future, Fleming and Button aren't going pick up my bills when I open a fabulous restaurant, but I will, and with a swift gut check, she will do it. She has to.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2006
attyfan said:
No I haven't forgotten. I could care less about the media-most of whom just watch skating to 'report' on a sport they know less than nothing about.
I will always remember what Michelle said at her interview following Nagano 'I didn't lose the gold-I won the silver'. That is an attitude I like. Positive about good results not negative. It's like crying about an A minus or a B instead of getting that A plus. As long as I see an athlete doing their best or at least trying to I am happy.
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2005
Red Dog said:
Then why am I reading that Kwan can't win under COP?
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2003
Red Dog said:
KIMMIE
Will win the 2006 Ladies Figure Skating Olympic Gold Medal!!!
Sasha Karenina
Actually, the ISU rulebook has a way of describing what constitutes an official fall. It's something like "If a large part of the body makes contact with the ice" or something like that. Hopefully, Hockeyfan or another COP professor
will quote it for us. But it's worded so it covers falls in which, for example, the skater comes down on his hands and knees, ie, near butt contact with the ice.
***********************************
On another subject, DancinDiva--four years ago, I certainly recall Sasha being very confident about her skating, which came across to many as arrogant. I have tapes of fluff pieces on her in which Sasha says she's very competitive, that she won't be satisfied until she's number one, that she will do whatever she has to in order to become number one, that she was a perfectionist, that she was very aggressive, and that she was a fighter. Although I don't recall Sasha saying, "I definitely consider myself to be one of the top skaters in the world," or something to that effect, Sasha was interviewed A LOT back then and if you remember her saying it, I wouldn't be surprised.
In any case, from everything I heard or read that Sasha said, she sounded like someone who definitely did not fit the mold of the self-effacing "princess" and "ladylike" female figure skater. Her personality and comments would not have even raised an eyebrow had she been a tennis player or a member of the soccer team. To me, her comments sounded as if she knew herself well, including her strengths and weaknesses, and that she was confident about her abilities and potential to win. Maybe I missed it, but I never read or head her say anything even close to, "I'm one of the top skaters in the world."
As for her "bed" and "lying in it," I think she has. In '03/04 she was beating Shizuka Arakawa all the time in the GP series. Even when she fell in programs, Sasha was getting the highest scores with the COP--at least the way the judges were using it back then. So things fell apart with Tarasova, and none of us knows really what happened there, ie, what role Sasha's mother played or what impact Tarasova's health had on the decision to change to Robin Wagner just weeks before Nationals. Sasha did seem to have improved jump technique, at least to me, with Wagner. But Wagner also butchered, IMO, one of the best LPs I've seen--TT's black-&-white "Swan Lake"--and also changed the whole thing during just the four or five weeks between USN and Worlds. Plus, in perfect chaos theory fashion, Sasha leaving Tarasova allowed Shizza to leave Richard Callaghan, with whom she had made no progress, for Tarasova, who in three weeks turned Shizza into a jaw-droppingly gorgeous World champion. It was reported that after the competition Sasha approached Tarasova, looked at her, and just lowered her head.
The "by the way" side note from the commentators and the media was that Sasha had beaten Michelle, who had finished fourth overall. But Sasha didn't "win the silver" in the eyes of the media. Sasha "lost the gold," "blew another opportunity for gold," etc. We also now know that it was around this time that Sasha's parents began the process of separation, which was something Sasha kept very private. I'm guessing that skating insiders knew, but I sure never heard a peep out of her about it. I don't read Sasha's journal unless something interesting is in it, which there never is. So she just kept writing about skating and food. Sasha could have gotten a lot of sympathy points if she'd let it subtly leak out that her parants were separated and moving toward divorce. But she didn't. I think Sasha's secrecy about it is an indicator of how devastated she, and I'm sure the whole family was, by the breakup of Cohen's marriage. All in all, IMO that was at least one tough bed Sasha has already had to lie in.
Of course, what a skater says is open to interpretation and you're entitled to yours, natch. The double standard I see, and should have made clearer in my post, is between male and female athletes. When a male figure skater says, "I am going to be Olympic champion" as both Brian Joubert did when he was "hot" and Plushenko said at some point since 2002, Terry Gannon said how refreshing it was for a skater to be so up front and honest. Joubert hasn't come anywhere near to living up to the expectations people had for him and that his talent promised. But at least in the US, the reaction from the media has just been "ho-hum."
To bring it home, Timothy Goebel won the bronze medal in SLC and seemed to be on just the right track of getting his presentation up to the level, or close enough, to his technical "quad king" abilities. Goebel was on the podium at Worlds in '02 and '03, IIRC, which I probably don't, but my point is he was doing well. Then came the whole enigmatic situation with his boots and his back and his this and his that, and the poor guy couldn't medal to save his life. Yet the commentators and the media again reacted with a little negative excitement at first, that is, for perhaps one Nationals and Worlds, and then it was, "Another meltdown by Tim Goebel--too bad. Wasn't Johnny Weir great!"
But if a female skater--forget Sasha, any female skater--would have said the same thing Joubert did and then began failing everywhere, or had won the bronze medal at the '02 Olympics and had gone down like Goebel did, that female skater would have been picked apart as if the commentators and media were vultures and the skater was the carrion. It happened to Nicole Bobek, Angela Nikodinov, Nancy Kerrigan after she bombed '03 Worlds until the "whack," Debi Thomas, and I'm sure other GSers can think of more.
I watched my tape of '05 Nationals recently in which Sasha skated a great SP but had a slight hand down early in her LP and a fall about midway through the program. Peggy, Dick, and Gannon harped and harped even on the hand down, which was basically fingers down, about how "any mistake" Sasha made "just broke the spell," as if they were saying, as soon as her fingers touched down early on, "Well, it's already ruined. Why bother watching the rest?" Really, I felt like, "They're talking longer about this 'broken spell' thing if Cohen isn't 'perfect' than one of my GS posts. Criminy!"
I'm only bringing Michelle into this to note the difference between Peggy and Dick's comments about Sasha and Michelle at '05 USN. As much as Peggy and Dick harped negatively on Sasha, they were as giddy and positive about Michelle, saying again and again, "This is a lovefest for Michelle!" They had good reason, since Michelle had just tied Maribel Vincent Owen's record of nine National championships, so please, nobody, Michelle deserved all the accolades they showered on her.
In the post event interview, Sasha's posture was hunched over and she answered the questions politely but in a dull monotone, as if all the life had trickled out of her. At the time I remember thinking, "Peggy and Dick are right! If Cohen can't pull it together, they should get on her case." However, knowing now that this was when her parents were in the midst of their divorce, it doesn't excuse anything, but at least for me it puts Sasha's consistency problems into a new perspective. No wonder she wanted to go back to SoCal and John Nicks. With so much instability in her home life, it makes sense that she would seek out surroundings and people she knew would be supportive of her. Anyway, Sasha had to lie in that bed and didn't complain. She went on to Worlds and won the silver against an impossible-to-beat Irina Slutskaya.
Meanwhile, Arakawa, whom I love, please note, dropped from first in '04 to ninth in '05. I hated to see that happen to Shizza, so please don't take this as a diss of Shizuka in any way. It's just the unfortunate truth that Schizza's drop from first to ninth in one year while Sasha won her second World silver medal and again beat Michelle overall helps me make my point that Sasha's consistency in terms of having never dropped below fourth place at USN or any major ISU competition since '02. IIRC, she was fifth or sixth at one of the cheesefests when she was sick in December '03, and blew one or two Campbell's Soup Bowls, but other than those, the biggest "meltdown" Cohen has had was when she came in third at '03 USN with an LP so tight and stultified, I thought she would crack from her own internal pressure.
Honestly, I've gone back and forth with Cohen, one season thinking, "Okay, she's getting there," and the next thinking, "Silver Sasha--your skating is dull and you'll always be tarnished. I'm moving on," and back to, "Hmm, there really is something quite special there. (And I don't mean being "The Bendy Girl".) Come on, Sasha!"
The way I see it, it's not a question of "She's made her bed. Now she has to lie in it." Rather, it's her journey that has had unexpected miles of mud and hair pin turns, big pits, flat tires--okay, no b**b jokes --and great steep mountains that weren't on the map. As an "I've got the world in my pocket" 17-year-old, clearly Cohen expected she would glide along to become National and World champion by 2003 or '04. As a 21-year-old, looking back on them, the last four years probably seem like "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride."
No matter who or what she is, no matter how she skates at these Olympics, I just can't find it in my heart to have anything but respect for Cohen. At 17 she said she was a fighter and that's what I've seen. Has she been slow to realize a lot of things? Yes. Has she made poor decisions in the past? Yes. Does she still have a number of technical and performance elements to work on? Yes. Has she skated to two World silver medals while her parents were splitting up? Yes. Has Sasha kept competing, through chronic injuries, physical and emotional pain while others have given up the sport? Yes--which is not a negative comment on those who left. I'm sure it was the right thing for thm to do. Has she been more candid in her statements than most "ladies" figure skaters? You betcha.
I had not intention of this post becoming "Sasha Karenina," or "Rgirl's Olympic Tome on Cohen," but that's how it turned out. JMLBUO. Just my long boring useless opinion.
Rgirl
To answer your question: The deduction for a fall is -1.00, whether you fall attempting a quad-toe or by catching your blade on a rut in the ice while you're stroking. A fall is a fall is a fall--and -1.00 any time your butt hits the ice.FreeKatie said:
Actually, the ISU rulebook has a way of describing what constitutes an official fall. It's something like "If a large part of the body makes contact with the ice" or something like that. Hopefully, Hockeyfan or another COP professor
will quote it for us. But it's worded so it covers falls in which, for example, the skater comes down on his hands and knees, ie, near butt contact with the ice.***********************************
On another subject, DancinDiva--four years ago, I certainly recall Sasha being very confident about her skating, which came across to many as arrogant. I have tapes of fluff pieces on her in which Sasha says she's very competitive, that she won't be satisfied until she's number one, that she will do whatever she has to in order to become number one, that she was a perfectionist, that she was very aggressive, and that she was a fighter. Although I don't recall Sasha saying, "I definitely consider myself to be one of the top skaters in the world," or something to that effect, Sasha was interviewed A LOT back then and if you remember her saying it, I wouldn't be surprised.
In any case, from everything I heard or read that Sasha said, she sounded like someone who definitely did not fit the mold of the self-effacing "princess" and "ladylike" female figure skater. Her personality and comments would not have even raised an eyebrow had she been a tennis player or a member of the soccer team. To me, her comments sounded as if she knew herself well, including her strengths and weaknesses, and that she was confident about her abilities and potential to win. Maybe I missed it, but I never read or head her say anything even close to, "I'm one of the top skaters in the world."
As for her "bed" and "lying in it," I think she has. In '03/04 she was beating Shizuka Arakawa all the time in the GP series. Even when she fell in programs, Sasha was getting the highest scores with the COP--at least the way the judges were using it back then. So things fell apart with Tarasova, and none of us knows really what happened there, ie, what role Sasha's mother played or what impact Tarasova's health had on the decision to change to Robin Wagner just weeks before Nationals. Sasha did seem to have improved jump technique, at least to me, with Wagner. But Wagner also butchered, IMO, one of the best LPs I've seen--TT's black-&-white "Swan Lake"--and also changed the whole thing during just the four or five weeks between USN and Worlds. Plus, in perfect chaos theory fashion, Sasha leaving Tarasova allowed Shizza to leave Richard Callaghan, with whom she had made no progress, for Tarasova, who in three weeks turned Shizza into a jaw-droppingly gorgeous World champion. It was reported that after the competition Sasha approached Tarasova, looked at her, and just lowered her head.
The "by the way" side note from the commentators and the media was that Sasha had beaten Michelle, who had finished fourth overall. But Sasha didn't "win the silver" in the eyes of the media. Sasha "lost the gold," "blew another opportunity for gold," etc. We also now know that it was around this time that Sasha's parents began the process of separation, which was something Sasha kept very private. I'm guessing that skating insiders knew, but I sure never heard a peep out of her about it. I don't read Sasha's journal unless something interesting is in it, which there never is. So she just kept writing about skating and food. Sasha could have gotten a lot of sympathy points if she'd let it subtly leak out that her parants were separated and moving toward divorce. But she didn't. I think Sasha's secrecy about it is an indicator of how devastated she, and I'm sure the whole family was, by the breakup of Cohen's marriage. All in all, IMO that was at least one tough bed Sasha has already had to lie in.
Of course, what a skater says is open to interpretation and you're entitled to yours, natch. The double standard I see, and should have made clearer in my post, is between male and female athletes. When a male figure skater says, "I am going to be Olympic champion" as both Brian Joubert did when he was "hot" and Plushenko said at some point since 2002, Terry Gannon said how refreshing it was for a skater to be so up front and honest. Joubert hasn't come anywhere near to living up to the expectations people had for him and that his talent promised. But at least in the US, the reaction from the media has just been "ho-hum."
To bring it home, Timothy Goebel won the bronze medal in SLC and seemed to be on just the right track of getting his presentation up to the level, or close enough, to his technical "quad king" abilities. Goebel was on the podium at Worlds in '02 and '03, IIRC, which I probably don't, but my point is he was doing well. Then came the whole enigmatic situation with his boots and his back and his this and his that, and the poor guy couldn't medal to save his life. Yet the commentators and the media again reacted with a little negative excitement at first, that is, for perhaps one Nationals and Worlds, and then it was, "Another meltdown by Tim Goebel--too bad. Wasn't Johnny Weir great!"
But if a female skater--forget Sasha, any female skater--would have said the same thing Joubert did and then began failing everywhere, or had won the bronze medal at the '02 Olympics and had gone down like Goebel did, that female skater would have been picked apart as if the commentators and media were vultures and the skater was the carrion. It happened to Nicole Bobek, Angela Nikodinov, Nancy Kerrigan after she bombed '03 Worlds until the "whack," Debi Thomas, and I'm sure other GSers can think of more.
I watched my tape of '05 Nationals recently in which Sasha skated a great SP but had a slight hand down early in her LP and a fall about midway through the program. Peggy, Dick, and Gannon harped and harped even on the hand down, which was basically fingers down, about how "any mistake" Sasha made "just broke the spell," as if they were saying, as soon as her fingers touched down early on, "Well, it's already ruined. Why bother watching the rest?" Really, I felt like, "They're talking longer about this 'broken spell' thing if Cohen isn't 'perfect' than one of my GS posts. Criminy!"
I'm only bringing Michelle into this to note the difference between Peggy and Dick's comments about Sasha and Michelle at '05 USN. As much as Peggy and Dick harped negatively on Sasha, they were as giddy and positive about Michelle, saying again and again, "This is a lovefest for Michelle!" They had good reason, since Michelle had just tied Maribel Vincent Owen's record of nine National championships, so please, nobody, Michelle deserved all the accolades they showered on her.
In the post event interview, Sasha's posture was hunched over and she answered the questions politely but in a dull monotone, as if all the life had trickled out of her. At the time I remember thinking, "Peggy and Dick are right! If Cohen can't pull it together, they should get on her case." However, knowing now that this was when her parents were in the midst of their divorce, it doesn't excuse anything, but at least for me it puts Sasha's consistency problems into a new perspective. No wonder she wanted to go back to SoCal and John Nicks. With so much instability in her home life, it makes sense that she would seek out surroundings and people she knew would be supportive of her. Anyway, Sasha had to lie in that bed and didn't complain. She went on to Worlds and won the silver against an impossible-to-beat Irina Slutskaya.
Meanwhile, Arakawa, whom I love, please note, dropped from first in '04 to ninth in '05. I hated to see that happen to Shizza, so please don't take this as a diss of Shizuka in any way. It's just the unfortunate truth that Schizza's drop from first to ninth in one year while Sasha won her second World silver medal and again beat Michelle overall helps me make my point that Sasha's consistency in terms of having never dropped below fourth place at USN or any major ISU competition since '02. IIRC, she was fifth or sixth at one of the cheesefests when she was sick in December '03, and blew one or two Campbell's Soup Bowls, but other than those, the biggest "meltdown" Cohen has had was when she came in third at '03 USN with an LP so tight and stultified, I thought she would crack from her own internal pressure.
Honestly, I've gone back and forth with Cohen, one season thinking, "Okay, she's getting there," and the next thinking, "Silver Sasha--your skating is dull and you'll always be tarnished. I'm moving on," and back to, "Hmm, there really is something quite special there. (And I don't mean being "The Bendy Girl".) Come on, Sasha!"
The way I see it, it's not a question of "She's made her bed. Now she has to lie in it." Rather, it's her journey that has had unexpected miles of mud and hair pin turns, big pits, flat tires--okay, no b**b jokes
--and great steep mountains that weren't on the map. As an "I've got the world in my pocket" 17-year-old, clearly Cohen expected she would glide along to become National and World champion by 2003 or '04. As a 21-year-old, looking back on them, the last four years probably seem like "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride."No matter who or what she is, no matter how she skates at these Olympics, I just can't find it in my heart to have anything but respect for Cohen. At 17 she said she was a fighter and that's what I've seen. Has she been slow to realize a lot of things? Yes. Has she made poor decisions in the past? Yes. Does she still have a number of technical and performance elements to work on? Yes. Has she skated to two World silver medals while her parents were splitting up? Yes. Has Sasha kept competing, through chronic injuries, physical and emotional pain while others have given up the sport? Yes--which is not a negative comment on those who left. I'm sure it was the right thing for thm to do. Has she been more candid in her statements than most "ladies" figure skaters? You betcha.
I had not intention of this post becoming "Sasha Karenina," or "Rgirl's Olympic Tome on Cohen," but that's how it turned out. JMLBUO. Just my long boring useless opinion.
Rgirl
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2004
Rgirl said:
She definitely did make that comment. My father, my sister and I all very clearly remember hearing her say it. It was before either her Olys or Worlds performance, and I KNOW she said it because I remember my dad saying "Well doesn't she sound like a spoiled little princess." I didn't tape much that season so I don't know if I have the clip around anywhere, but if there is anything I am sure of, it is that she DID say it.
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