"True Hero of Sport" of the day: Sasha Cohen

Today we're going to talk about Sasha Cohen, a U.S. figure skater.

She is the 2006 Olympic silver medalist, a three-time World Championship medalist, the 2003 Grand Prix Final Champion, and the 2006 U.S. Champion.

Cohen was born on October 26, 1984 in Westwood, California, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Her nickname "Sasha" is a Russian nickname for "Alexandra". Sasha graduated from Futures High School in Mission Viejo, California in 2002.

In 2005, she published her autobiography, Fire on Ice. The autobiography was republished in 2006 adding a new chapter on the 2006 season.

A gymnast from an early age, Cohen switched to figure skating when she was seven years old, but it wasn't until she was eleven that she began to take the sport seriously.

Cohen rose to prominence in the skating community during the 2000 United States Figure Skating Championships. Just up from juniors, Cohen dropped from first place after the short program to second after the free skating and qualified for the world team. Too young for the World Figure Skating Championships, a loophole at the time would have allowed her to compete in senior worlds if she medaled at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships. Cohen did not medal at world juniors and so did not go to senior worlds.

During April 2006, Cohen started the Champions on Icetour, participated in the second annual "Skating with the Stars, Under the Stars" gala in Central Park and performed in the Marshalls U.S. Figure Skating International Showcase. On April 15, 2006, Cohen announced that she intended to compete into the 2010 season and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She said via her official website, "I will decide after the COI Tour how much skating and what events I will do next season."

Cohen announced on May 6, 2009 that she planned to make a comeback for the 2010 Winter Olympics. She received invitations to compete in the 2009 Trophée Eric Bompard and in the 2009 Skate America in the 2009–2010 Grand Prix Series. Cohen was forced to withdraw from both of her planned Grand Prix events due to an injury to her calf.

On January 21, 2010 she finally took to the competitive ice for the first time in four years at the 2010 AT&T U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane, Washington. She debuted her program toEspaña Cañí, and skated a strong performance landing a triple lutz-double toe, a triple flip, a double axel, along with her signature spiral sequence and spins earning 69.63 points putting her in second place, just 0.43 from first place finisher Mirai Nagasu. However, her free skate, set to Moonlight Sonata, was filled with errors; she fell on a triple flip and had two-footed landings on a number of other jumps. Cohen finished fourth in the championships, behind Rachael Flatt, Mirai Nagasu and Ashley Wagner, and was not selected for the Olympic team, however was appointed as second alternate to the 2010 U.S. Olympic team and the 2010 World Championship team.

Posted by Giovana Bonfim, 701.