Sasha Cohen will risk it in U.S. championships

Germany’s Katarina Witt had a simple goal when she decided to return to competitive skating after the five-year absence following her second straight Olympic gold medal in 1988.

Witt wanted to get to the 1994 Olympics to show the world her program -- “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” -- to portray the torment of war-torn Sarajevo a decade after the joyous Olympics where she won her first gold.

Then the 1994 competition began, and Witt did so well in the short program she found herself in a place that had become unfamiliar.

“The most difficult part of the comeback was not being in competition for five years, not dealing with that pressure,” Witt said Tuesday. “In the past, my greatest advantage was being able to focus under pressure.

“Suddenly I saw a chance at a medal and my athlete’s heart took over. I should have taken it the way I did all year, when my only motivation was the music.”

Sixth after the short program, Witt made jumping errors and wound up an underwhelming seventh.

That absence from competition is one of the issues Sasha Cohen faces in tonight’s short program at the U.S. Championships, returning to Olympic-style skating for the first time since she finished third at the 2006 world championships.

So are injuries.

They derailed 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano in preparing his 1994 Olympic comeback. He finished sixth.

They proved the undoing of two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan in her attempt to skate in a third Olympics at age 25 after two seasons of competing only in nationals and worlds. She withdrew after her first practice at the 2006 Winter Games.

They bedeviled 2006 Olympic champion Evgeny Plushenko of Russia as he lost more than 20 pounds for what is becoming a stunningly successful comeback after a three-season absence -- evidenced by his world record score for a brilliant short program Wednesday at the European Championships.

Cohen, silver medalist at the 2006 Olympics and fourth in 2002, revealed last May she wanted to make a third Olympic team because, at 25, she might never be capable of doing it again.

“She had to take the risk if she felt it in her heart,” Boitano said.

Her task got tougher when the U.S. earned only two women’s spots rather than the maximum three for the 2010 Winter Games. It was further complicated by the calf injury that forced Cohen to withdraw from two Grand Prix events last fall.

The physical demands also have increased dramatically under the sport’s new judging system, used at the Olympics for the first time in 2006 and made more rigorous two years ago. The judges nit-pick performances to death.

“The sport has moved a long way from where it was when Sasha left,” said Charles Cyr of Palm Springs, an international judge. “I think she should have come back a year earlier.”

Cohen performed regularly with the “Stars on Ice” tour the last three years, but Wednesday was the first time she had skated before an audience in a competitive environment since March 2006.

The question was whether Cohen, always an erratic jumper, could jump with any consistency even in a practice. The answer was yes, even if she did fall on a triple flip jump during the run-through of her 2-minute, 45-second short program.

“I have been just putting one foot in front of the other no matter how hard it has been, and it has been paying off now,” Cohen had said by telephone two weeks ago.

It remains to be seen whether Cohen can skate two clean programs in the same event for the first time in her career. She failed to hold the lead at the 2006 Olympics and two world championships.

“It is a substantial challenge,” said her coach, John Nicks.

So was getting to this point. But the hardest part of coming back remains going forward.

phersh@tribune.com