Slip Costs Cohen Title, but Second Place Has Silver Lining

Sasha Cohen, so small she could barely be seen over the table she was sitting behind, leaned over a chair and grabbed the hand of Sara Wheat.

“I’m so glad you won,” Cohen said to Wheat, who seemed both startled and pleased to receive the congratulations.

Wheat had just passed Cohen to win the junior ladies gold medal at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships Friday at the Delta Center.

Cohen, who had led after the short program but stumbled on three of her jumps in the long program, won the silver medal and Jennifer Kirk took the bronze.

Cohen, a 4-foot-8-inch ninth-grader from Laguna Niguel, was a gymnast until she took a tumble and nearly landed on her head, a scary turn of events that caused Galina Cohen to end her daughter’s gymnastics career immediately.

She was being sincerely sweet when she congratulated Wheat. But maybe Cohen should also consider herself lucky. For no American woman who has won the junior national medal has gone on to win an Olympic gold medal since Carol Heiss in the 1950s.

It is coming to be thought of as a curse, winning of junior gold, a guarantee that you will never be heard from again.

For example, the 1997 junior champion, Andrea Gardiner, stands 17th going into tonight’s long program; 1996 junior champion Shelby Lyons couldn’t even qualify for this competition; 1995 champion Sydne Vogel, who beat Tara Lipinski that year, is 16th; 1990 winner Alice Sue Claeys is 20th and last.

But even if winning wasn’t everything Friday, this didn’t mean that Cohen, who trains with Coach John Nicks in Costa Mesa, wasn’t annoyed with herself when, on her first jump, she tripped and nearly tumbled to the ice.

“I was nervous,” Cohen said. “I was nervous for the first part of the program.”

Still, one of the figure skating experts who sat in the crowd said that of the three medal winners, “I’d want to be coaching Sasha. She’s got the most potential.”

Nicks said he thought the junior competition Friday might be better than the senior competition. He was kidding. Maybe.

Mary Scotvold, who, with her husband Evy, coaches Kirk and who coached Nancy Kerrigan, said, “This crop of juniors is every bit as strong as the group with Nancy [Kerrigan], Kristi [Yamaguchi] and Tonia [Kwiatkowski]. They did pretty well for themselves.”

There are also two 13-year-olds competing in the senior competition: Sarah Hughes, who is second going into tonight’s finals, and Naomi Nari Nam, also a student of Nicks’ and good friends with Cohen.

“I call them double trouble,” Nicks said. Nari Nam is fourth after having taken a scary fall Thursday night that left her with a lump on her head, a strained neck and a fierce determination to land that triple jump tonight. “She’s a tough little kid,” Nicks said.

Friday’s fourth-place finisher, 12-year-old Elizabeth Kwon, also has large talent, making this a crop of six phenoms eager to star at the 2002 Olympics.

None has any more natural talent or ice presence than Cohen, who, according to Nicks, already does 30% to 40% of her own choreography.

Cohen, whose father, Roger, a lawyer, is 6 feet 1 and whose mother, Ukraine-born Galina, is 5 feet 1, has a love of classical music and an affinity for ballet and gymnastics.

She was 7 when Galina put a stop to the tumbling career. “My mom thought that if I fell on the ice, I would just slide,” Cohen said.

Cohen, the smallest by three inches of the medal winners, somehow fills up the ice. So tiny in this large arena that Cohen seems to disappear into the corners, so petite it seems she could twirl in the palm of your hand, Cohen has a gracefulness of movement with her arms and in her spins and twirls that is usually found only in much more experienced performers.

Where this comes from, Cohen doesn’t know exactly. “Inside me,” is all she can figure.

For all three junior medalists, this will be their last nationals at this level. All three, when asked, said they would be joining the seniors next season. Cohen, though, added a bit of humor to her answer.

“I’m moving up,” Cohen said when the question was asked. Immediately, Nicks grabbed the microphone and lectured that “you are supposed to say, ‘I’m going to consult with my coach and then decide,’ ” to which Cohen said, “but I’m moving up.”

Again, Nicks took the microphone. Again, Nicks said, “You are supposed to say, ‘I’m going to consult with my coach and then decide.’ ” So Cohen faced a roomful of questioners and with a perfectly straight face said, “I’m going to consult with my coach and then decide.”

And everybody laughed. Cohen had the room in the palm of her hand. It will not be the last time.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com