The Ice Storm

By Alice Park

When figure skater Sasha Cohen decided to buy her first house, she picked an idyllic abode in Laguna Beach, Calif. With views of the Pacific Ocean on one side and rolling canyons on the other, it was the perfect location for the elite-level skater to repair to as she prepared for her second Olympic Games. There was only one problem. When the rains came, Cohen learned that the beauty and charm of the house hid a major flaw: it had been built on a shaky foundation and was in danger of sliding away.

Her new house wasn't the only thing in Cohen's life teetering on the brink. Figure skating, the sport by which she defines herself, was losing considerable ground after a judging scandal in the pairs competition in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games exposed the cronyism and rigged voting on which the sport was resting. It wasn't just established competitors like Cohen who were affected. The expose threatened to alienate skating's future champions, including rising stars like Kimmie Meissner, who last year became only the second American woman to land a triple Axel in competition. Those youngsters were busy pushing the sport to new levels of excellence, but would they continue to bother if the results were fixed? Embarrassed and under pressure from the International Olympic Committee to reform, the International Skating Union (I.S.U.) decided to raze and rebuild.

In Torino all eyes will again be on the judges' table, but this time the I.S.U. welcomes the attention. Its new scoring system, inaugurated in the 2004 season, will be used in an Olympic competition for the first time. Designed to force judges to back up their subjective scores in a more quantitative way, the revised system is not perfect, but support is growing. "It empowers the skater to participate in the result in a way she never has before," says 1984 Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton. "It is a step in the right direction."

For the skaters, the new rules mean rethinking every edge they carve on the ice to impress the judges. Gone is the punitive 6.0 system, in which the athletes start with the maximum score of perfection and lose points for mistakes and poorly executed skills or because the French judge doesn't like magenta. In its place is a cumulative system in which skaters begin with a blank slate and accumulate points, depending on the elements they complete (see box).

Perhaps the biggest change is that the new rules don't reward those circus-leap triple Axels to the exclusion of other skills. That benefits skaters like Meissner who have the big tricks but are more analytical and calculating enough to maximize their point totals with the minimum amount of exhausting big tricks. Under the new code of points (COP), as it's called, there is no hiding a weak spin, sloppy footwork or poor basics. It's a far more demanding and exacting measure of an athlete.

COP draws a line between the intuitive skaters of yesterday and the more technical, all-around stars of tomorrow. And you need look no further than the trio of American women headed to Torino--Cohen, Meissner and Michelle Kwan--to know that this changing of the guard is well under way.

On one side are Cohen, a petite, doll-like 21-year-old, and Meissner, a lanky 16-year-old from Maryland. Cohen, a breathtakingly elegant skater, has had a disturbing habit of cracking at major events. But she has immersed herself in the new scoring structure, crafting smart programs that could finally elevate her from perennial runner-up to ice queen in Italy. "I am happy with the new system," she told TIME. "It rewards points for more than just jumping."

Unlike Cohen, Meissner didn't have much adapting to do. She has basically known nothing but COP since she debuted at the senior level last year. She flung herself into Olympic contention with that tricky triple Axel and has thrived under COP ever since, reaping rewards by filling her programs with difficult moves from beginning to end.

The transition hasn't been so smooth for Kwan. At her first competition without the 6.0s, she finished fourth, the first time she failed to medal at an event in a decade. Injuries kept her out of the pre-Olympic competitions, including last month's qualifier. She was still awarded a spot on the Torino team, but that berth puts her in the unenviable position of making her competitive debut this year on Olympic ice. "I would be terrified," says Peggy Fleming, a 1968 Olympic gold medalist. "She hasn't been out there competing and doing her routines. I'm extremely scared for her."

That fear will only get worse when Kwan finds herself up against not just her teammates but also medal contenders like Russia's Irina Slutskaya and a gaggle of Japanese women--all of whom have wrestled COP into submission. Still, Kwan is a big-time performer with loads of experience.

No one knows that better than Cohen. She has built a career on her innate talent, using her balletic grace and anatomy-defying flexibility to mesmerize judges and fans. But Cohen is the first to admit that all that elan disguised a lack of discipline and control that has kept her from becoming a champion. Her string of six second-place finishes at U.S. and world competitions--most of them behind Kwan--were more the result of her losing gold than of her earning silver. "She makes you have goose bumps when you see that perfection," says Fleming. "But I have seen so many beautiful performances only in practices. I want to see that at the Olympics. I know she has that in her."

In an Olympic year, most figure skaters avoid the O word as if it were toxic, predictably fending off questions with the usual patter about doing their best, enjoying the experience. Not Cohen. Over lunch in a Newport Beach, Calif., restaurant last summer, Cohen addressed the Olympic question head on. "The Olympics are a very important part of my training this year," she said. "Because I'm looking for more than an Olympic medal. I want Olympic gold." Brash, yes, but this year Cohen may actually deliver on that bravado.

When she finished fourth at the 2002 Games, Cohen, who had skated her whole life at a rink near her home in Laguna Niguel, Calif., knew that something had to change. "That was a traumatic time for me," she said. "I was frustrated that I wasn't getting the level of training that I needed." She decided she was missing the Olympic-caliber coaching and skating facilities of the East Coast, so she and her family moved to considerably chillier Connecticut, where she joined the powerhouse skating team of Tatiana Tarasova, who has coached eight Olympic champions. There Cohen was forced to adopt a strict regimen of endurance and strength training to build up her core for whipping off jumps. The result: she had her best season, winning three international competitions. The 56-year-old Tarasova's health began to decline, however, and so did her relationship with Cohen, who was starting to chafe under the rigors of the harsh training.

Just before the 2004 national championships, Cohen made another abrupt change, leaving Tarasova, who moved back to Russia, for Robin Wagner, who had coached Sarah Hughes to Olympic gold. Wagner supplemented Tarasova's physical training with the emotional support that Cohen was missing. But by the end of that season, the old demons had re-emerged. Cohen finished second to Kwan for the third time at the nationals and was forced to miss several competitions because of a recurring back injury. When she returned to the ice, her confidence was shot. "At that point," she said, "I needed to take control of my skating." She packed her bags again, returning to Southern California and her first coach, John Nicks.

If the sojourn to the East had taught Cohen anything, it was that only she could make herself a winner. "I was always looking for a coach to make me a champion," she said. "But ultimately you have to make it happen." Cohen and Nicks now have more of a collaboration than a coach-student relationship. To toughen her psyche against the crushing pressures of competition, Cohen devours self-help books and inspirational stories of champion athletes. (She recently finished Lance Armstrong's bio.) "Mentally, I'm more prepared," she said. "Physically, I'm stronger. I used to do my long program once and my legs were wiped, but now I practice it over and over."

Cohen's teammate Meissner has been blissfully oblivious to the Olympic gauntlet. At a pre-Olympic summit last fall, Meissner trailed Cohen like a puppy and watched in awe as Cohen deftly defused question after question from reporters about not skating up to her potential and always competing in Kwan's shadow. It was a crash course for the teenager in accepting the baggage that comes with being an Olympic-caliber skater. Even if Meissner is not as polished as Cohen or Kwan--"Sometimes I can't believe the dumb things I say"--her candor makes her a refreshing addition to the women's squad.

Just don't let the girlish innocence mislead you. Meissner, the youngest of four children, is a competitor. After she missed a jump combination in her short program at nationals last month, she vowed to complete it two days later in the free program. And she did, flawlessly. "Once she sets a goal for herself, she's determined to reach it," says her mother Judy. This season that goal was making the Olympic team. "She is a great competitor. She's mentally tough," says her coach of nine years, Pam Gregory. "She stays in the moment and is able to not get distracted when she's competing by what is going on around her."

That focus doesn't always apply, of course, to practice sessions. During her first warm-up at a major international event a few years ago at the junior level, where skaters like Slutskaya were competing as seniors, Meissner was so starstruck, "she couldn't land a jump for two days," says Gregory. After the skater pulled herself together, she realized that if she wanted a ticket to Torino, she needed to master some mighty moves. "She got to see some of the Japanese skaters doing quad jumps and triple Axels, and it got her motivated," Gregory says.

Along with the jumps, Meissner concentrated on improving her expressiveness on the ice. She enlisted the help of Lori Nichol, who has choreographed routines for Kwan, to design a more sophisticated long program that would help judges see her as a worthy senior-level competitor.

It's a progression that is all the more remarkable given her exhausting schedule. Meissner still attends Fallston High School in the morning and skates every weekday afternoon at the University of Delaware, an hour's drive from her home. If there is any danger of her becoming a skating diva, her three elder brothers will dispel it. "They don't really pay attention to what I'm doing," she said during a break in her training last summer. Nate, a firefighter, learned about his sister's Axel feat last year only when a buddy in the firehouse saw the replay on ESPN and called him over.

Meissner is determined to add the triple Axel to her long program in Torino, but even without it, her programs are packed with the points that could land her on the podium. "I don't feel pressure about anything," she said, assessing her chances with youthful realism. "I've never gone to [the] world [championships], never won nationals, never been to the Olympics. So I have nothing to live up to."

That may change in Torino if Meissner keeps with tradition: the past two women's gold medalists have come from the U.S., were teenagers and claimed their titles in upset wins. If Meissner can do that, maybe even her brothers will pay attention.