Cohen adds spice to bland menu A surprising second, 17-year-old produces week's only intrigue January 12, 2002 - LOS ANGELES -- Intrigue? Mystery? Suspense? Until Friday afternoon, if anyone came to the 2002 U.S. Figure Skating Championships looking for this, they came to the wrong place. They would have had more luck at the L.A. Auto Show going on next door. Considering the poor attendance this week, maybe that's what they did. Late Thursday night, Todd Eldredge, Tim Goebel and Micheal Weiss finished 1-2-3 to win the three U.S. men's Olympic berths. Yawn. Among the 18 men in the field, only these three have significant international experience -- they're the only men who have been seen extensively by the same international judges who will be at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. And those judges like all three, which explains why Weiss received outrageously high technical marks from the U.S. judges for his free skate even though he fell three times and bobbled through a program he made up as he went along. Who wants to risk sending a newcomer to the home Games? However, 17-year- old Sasha Cohen has made the women's competition very interesting. After the short program Thursday, Cohen is a surprising second, behind defending champion Michelle Kwan, going into tonight's free skate. Sarah Hughes is third and Angela Nikodinov fourth. While Kwan is almost a sure bet to win her sixth national title, the other three skaters are fighting for the final two Olympic berths behind her. Cohen's surge up the ranks has caused quite an uproar -- something she doesn't mind in the least. She argues constantly with her coach, 72-year-old John Nicks, who has been a U.S. coach at the past nine Olympic Games and a U.S. World championships coach 35 times. Can you imagine Mary Lou Retton arguing with Bela Karolyi? "I develop a strategy for her, but whether Sasha follows it or not is debatable," said Nicks, who always sounds proud, exasperated and exhausted when discussing Cohen, who missed last year's nationals because of a back injury. "If Sasha skates strongly and well, then I'm sure she'll make the team." Cohen burst onto the scene two years ago when she came straight out of the junior ranks to capture the silver medal -- and give Kwan a scare -- at the 2000 U.S. Championships in Cleveland. If you doubt that judges control which skaters advance and how fast they advance, consider this: at those 2000 nationals, not one judge gave Cohen a first-place vote over Kwan, even though she skated a beautifully touching long program with only a single error. She fell on her final jump, a triple toe loop. But then again, so did Kwan. "I don't think I would've won if I had landed the jump," Cohen said at the time, already well aware of how the totem pole in figure skating works. "Michelle is a world and Olympic skater and she has a reputation which I don't have." Cohen has a reputation for three things right now -- that brilliant performance at the 2000 championships; her attempts this season to become the first woman to land a quadruple jump; and the feisty relationship she has with her coach. She decided she wanted to skate her long program this Olympic year to music from the opera Carmen. Nicks thought that was a bad idea because so many other skaters have used that music, including both Debi Thomas and Katarina Witt at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Witt won her second gold medal. Thomas was third. "I believe if you use the same music, you should do it better," Nicks said. "Then one day I was listening to Carmen on the car radio and the D.J. started describing the characters. When he got to Carmen, he used very descriptive words -- attractive, beautiful, tempestuous, flirtatious, confrontational, argumentative. And I thought, 'That's Sasha.' Done deal." Nicks has coached some of the best skaters in the world, including four- time U.S. pairs champions Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner and three-time U.S. pairs champions JoJo Starbuck and Kenneth Shelley. But he's never dealt with a skater like Cohen. "She's absolutely abnormal," he said. Cohen smiles when asked about butting heads with Nicks. "I am different," Cohen said. "I do listen to what he says. I always hear him out, but I have my own opinions, too." She said that most of her opinions are about the artistic nature of the program and that she listens to him more about jumping and strategy. "I'm not (being difficult) on purpose," said Cohen, who comes from nearby Laguna Niguel, Calif. "I just have my own ideas and he has his own ideas. We just have to try to find the middle line and put them together." Before the women's free skate tonight, the ice dancing wraps up with the free dance, with the top two couples getting Olympic berths. Three- time U.S. champions Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev are in first place.