A beautiful, brutal sport

Then, two days later, Cohen failed to land a triple lutz, crashing to the ice on her first jump of a disastrous free skate. Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa went on to capture gold, while Cohen took silver, and two weeks later was being skewered by Natalie Portman on a Weekend Update bit alongside Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live.

Jumping has long been required in women’s figure skating, but it was in 2006 where jumping elements diverged from the norm. Cohen, known for her artistic prowess, wasn’t a natural jumper. At the time, however, one of her U.S. rivals was Kimmie Meissner, a formidable technical skater who emerged a month after the 2006 Winter Games to jump her way to gold at the World Figure Skating Championships. Cohen, on the heels of her Olympic silver, took bronze at Worlds.

Cohen wasn’t denied her legacy, one that would have vaulted her into the conversation with the golden greats of American figure skating — Kristi Yamaguchi in 1992, Tara Lipinski in ’98 and Sarah Hughes in 2002, all of whom were in the house Thursday at the Forum di Milano to witness Liu join the ranks of Olympic gold medalists. (The U.S. might have won four golds in a row from 1992-2002, had it not been for Nancy Kerrigan settling for silver after she was infamously attacked one month before the 1994 Lillehammer Games.)

Cohen was, however, in the wrong place at the wrong time for the brilliant artistic skater she was.

It took 20 years for the U.S. to return to women’s figure skating prominence, but the anticipation of this year’s team of Liu, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito was unlike any other I’ve seen. No country has ever swept the Olympic podium in women’s figure skating (the men did it once, Sweden, in 1908, when figure skating was held in the summer,) but the U.S. had a shot in 2026.

Hopes of a sweep were quashed during Glenn’s short program, as she missed one jump, a required triple loop. It was a heartbreaking spectacle, as she landed the most difficult jump of her routine, a triple axel, early in her program, one of only two skaters in the competition to do so, along with eventual bronze medalist Ami Nakai of Japan. Glenn seemed to be soaring to the top of the leaderboard, when 360 degrees derailed her Olympic dream. While she didn’t fall, she was a bit off her line on the approach for the easier required triple loop, resulting in a mere two rotations and, not a deduction, but zero points for an invalid element.

One under rotation, and “Poof!” Glenn’s Olympic hopes vanished in an instant. The triple loop would have been worth upwards of seven points. After rebounding in the free skate, the 26-year-old from Plano, Texas finished with 214.91 points, so even a subpar triple loop could have put her on the podium, with Nakai finishing with 219.16 for bronze.

Liu clearly deserved gold. In what turned out to be marvelous night of figure skating, the 20-year-old Oakland native executed jumps that were a vision of strength and elegance. Had she not executed each of them at a top level, she wouldn’t have taken gold. And had she fallen on one, just one, Liu just might have fallen off the podium altogether, as Nakai and silver medalist Kaori Sakamoto of Japan were right on her heels after what appeared to be pristine skates.

That would have been a tragedy, as Liu was the best skater on the ice. For all the attention paid to jumps, her artistic elements were unmatched. Despite the best efforts of NBC announcers Lipinski and Johnny Weir to explain it, I don’t pretend to understand the nuances for scoring the sport. I know what I see though, and with every spin Liu executed, her plant foot never moved. Her final flourish, called a layback spin with a Biellmann finish, saw her plant her foot on the “T” of “Cortina” in the logo at middle ice and never wavered.

While Liu’s jumps got her to the podium, it was the artistic elements that put her over the top for gold with 226.79 points, less than two points ahead of Sakamoto. That last layback spin was the difference, an element that just happened to be Cohen’s breathtaking signature move.

Somewhere in Liu’s radiant celebration jump on the podium upon receiving her gold medal, a jump that went viral by the time the sun went down Thursday on the American West Coast, and a moment that might just stand as an icon of women’s figure skating, I’d like to think there was a redemption of sorts for Sasha Cohen, and her brilliant style of skating.