Cohen Can’t Overcome Her Big Slip-Ups

A careless mistake--a slip on her double axel, a jump Sasha Cohen completes routinely and with beautiful height and form--probably cost the 15-year-old Laguna Niguel figure skater a spot on the U.S. team for the Senior World Championships.

Cohen, who last month finished a strong second to Michelle Kwan at the U.S. Senior National Championships, needed to win a medal at the World Junior Championships this weekend so that she could circumvent age restriction rules and join Kwan and Sarah Hughes at the senior worlds. But she finished sixth at the junior worlds in Oberstdorf, Germany, on Saturday.

Jennifer Kirk, a 15-year-old from Newton, Mass., who finished seventh at the senior nationals, hit all seven of her triple jumps, including a triple-triple combination, to win the title. Kirk didn’t make a major mistake in three days of skating in Germany. Finishing second was the other American, 16-year-old Deanna Stellato of Glenview, Ill. Stellato finished ninth at the senior nationals. Sarah Meier of Switzerland won the bronze medal.

John Nicks, Cohen’s coach at Costa Mesa’s Ice Chalet, said Cohen skated a relatively clean long program Saturday. Cohen finished fifth in the long program, which counted for 50% of the final score. She had finished second in group qualifying, which counted for 20%, and a disastrous ninth in the short program.

Cohen completed four triple jumps Saturday in her long program, had no big falls and only two shaky landings on other triple jumps. But Cohen couldn’t pull herself out of the deep hole she had dug on Friday when she fell on her triple lutz and, late in the short program, her double axel.

“The judges were willing to give Sasha good scores,” Nicks said from Germany, “and I think if she hadn’t missed the axel on Friday, she would have had a chance. But Sasha left herself a tough job.”