Cohen’s Chances Take a Tumble

The stage was set for Sasha Cohen to win her first major figure skating title and forget that she’d stumbled to a silver medal at the Turin Olympics.

But Cohen bumbled her opening lines at the world championships on Wednesday, placing her behind 16-year-old Kimmie Meissner and third in her qualifying group.

Cohen landed her opening combination jump, on which she’d fallen at Turin, but she tumbled to the ice at the Pengrowth Saddledome on a triple flip, stepped out of a triple toe loop and fell on a triple salchow. She earned 110.36 points for her “Romeo and Juliet” program, trailing the 113.84 points Meissner earned for a six-triple jump performance and the group-leading 113.88 awarded to Japan’s Fumie Suguri.

Joannie Rochette of Canada led the other group with 117.12 points. Japan’s Yukari Nakano was second at 111.14, and Emily Hughes of Great Neck, N.Y., was third at 102.72.

Each skater’s score from the qualifying round is multiplied by .25 and added to the scores for the short program on Friday and the long program on Saturday. That minimizes the deficit for Cohen, the runner-up at the last two world championships, but she can’t afford more gaffes.

“I didn’t attack,” said Cohen, who has hinted that she might leave competitive skating for an acting career after she completes the Champions on Ice tour. “I need to just put a little more fire into it.... You have to be able to persevere and shake off any mistake and I kind of didn’t do that out there tonight. I kind of let that first mistake creep into my confidence for the rest of the program. You just have to be tougher.”

The 21-year-old from Corona Del Mar said she had no injuries and no excuses for her performance. “A title, it’s great, but titles aren’t really it anymore for me. It’s about the process of skating,” she said.

Meissner, sixth in Turin, suffered a ruptured right eardrum after she returned home to Bel Air, Md., and wasn’t allowed to spin for two weeks. Her rustiness cost her a few tenths on Wednesday, but she more than compensated with a triple flip-triple toe loop combination jump and a double axel-double toe loop-double loop final flourish. Her technical score of 60.80 was tops in her group.

“After I landed that first one I knew the rest of the program would be good,” Meissner said. “I’ve been training the whole year and I’m pretty confident in myself.”

Hughes, seventh at Turin, lost points when she fell on a triple loop and reduced a planned triple salchow to a single. “This is my first worlds and I feel like I skated a pretty good program,” she said.