She Shows She Can Take a Stand, but Will It Stick?

The beige-covered ankle was bending ... bending ... bending ... toward the ice.

The momentary gasp that swept through the Palavela arena sounded like a question.

Would Sasha Cohen bend with it?

Would she fall off this teetering double axel onto another frozen Olympic dream?

Would she lose this jump, as she has so often lost her focus, her fearlessness, her fight?

Four years ago, she’s sitting in chips.

Two years ago, she’s wearing a Zamboni leotard.

Tuesday night, with every ounce of her 95-pound body, she stood firm and silently screamed.

Not here. Not now. Not anymore.

“I thought, ‘I’m gonna land this,’ ” Cohen said.

Her ankle listened. Millions of viewers saw. Irina Slutskaya scowled.

And today, instead of waking up four more years away from an Olympic gold medal, Alexandra Pauline Cohen is only four minutes away after a brilliant short program that gave her the lead at halftime of the Winter Olympic Super Bowl.

Skating to a Russian folk song, “Dark Eyes,” she was all goodness and light, flying through four jumps, gliding through perfect spirals.

And then, at the end, not to be too technical about it, she did this really cool thing where she cocked her leg and spun like a top.

“I thought it was a good start, a very good start,” said John Nicks, Cohen’s coach. “But it was only a start.”

Entering Thursday’s deciding long program, Cohen holds less than a one-point lead over Russian favorite Slutskaya and former Japanese world champion Shizuka Arakawa, but Nicks knows that the most important number is three.

Three times, Cohen has held short-program leads in major championships and blown them.

In the last three Olympics, the leader of the short program has not won the gold medal.

“It’s like we say, you can’t win it during the short program, you can only lose it during the short program,” said Pam Gregory, coach of American kid Kimmie Meissner, who is stunningly in fifth place.

But hasn’t that always been Cohen’s problem? Losing it? Especially under pressure?

Nobody faced more heat Tuesday than the smallest woman in the flame.

Cohen was the last of the 29 skaters. She didn’t take the ice until nearly 11:30 p.m. local time. By then, defending world champion and leader Slutskaya was warm and dry and pouting.

Cohen had barely arrived at the rink, and Slutskaya had already scolded the media and begun playing mind games.

Moments after her skate, Slutskaya had been asked what was going through her mind.

“I’m not telling you,” she said.

Confused, I asked her again.

“I’m not telling you what I was thinking because it’s mine,” she answered sharply. “Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow? Hmmm. Probably not.”

What’s the big deal?

“If I tell you, then everybody will know my secret, and everybody will skate great, and maybe that’s OK for nationals, but this is the Olympics,” she said.

Apparently, Cohen found out.

Working a dozen skaters after the Russian, Cohen brushed Slutskaya’s intensity into a more dazzling portrait.

Where Slutskaya was dark -- from bodysuit to expression -- Cohen dressed and smiled like the tropics.

Where Slutskaya’s spins were the grinding of a cog, Cohen’s were like the flitting of a butterfly.

Where Slutskaya shoved her act at the judges, Cohen gleefully sold hers, again and again.

Before she took center ice, Nicks grabbed her hands.

“I believe in you,” he said.

She then, like seemingly never before, believed in herself, quickly hitting a triple-double combination and then bouncing around the ice for another minute before saving that double axel that saved her night.

“It took me a minute to get settled on my feet,” she admitted. “But then I tried to enjoy every minute of the performance.”

In the end, that enjoyment had spread to the 6,001 fans in the cramped arena, mostly Italian fans suddenly cheering for an American who celebrated like an American.

She pumped her fist. She blew kisses. She jumped into the arms of her coach. Later, after the scores appeared, she even flashed her No. 1 sign.

“It was tough,” she said. “But I was strong. I made it happen.”

The question, of course, is whether she can make it happen one more time.

Slutskaya continued trying to plant seeds of doubt, refusing to answer the question of whether she thought Cohen had skated better. Arakawa is a great jumper and is also a former world champion.

The woman in first place has the shakiest history, the barest championship cupboard and, with her fellow American Olympians embarrassing themselves all around her, perhaps the most pressure.

It’s enough to make a body bend ... bend ... bend.

Will Sasha Cohen break?

It is a question she will have to endure for only four more minutes, with a chance to provide an answer that will last a lifetime.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.