King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Arakawa's "good, quality performance" is enough for gold as Cohen and Slutskaya fall. Plus: Clutch Swedish curlers.

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Feb. 24, 2006 | So the woman nobody was talking about ended up winning it. Here's another way to put it: The woman who didn't choke got the gold medal.

Shizuka Arakawa was right there after the women's figure skating short program, in third place, within a point of the leader, American Sasha Cohen. But all the attention went to Cohen and the Russian favorite, Irina Slutskaya. They were the ones with the fabulous back stories of previous Olympic failure and, in Slutskaya's case, illness, her own and her mother's.

But Cohen, skating second in the last group of six, fell twice in her warmup, looked petrified as she took the ice, and fell hard on her first jump. She nearly fell on her second too, putting both hands on the ice.

A superstar in waiting since she finished fourth at Salt Lake as a 17-year-old, she continued her career-long pattern of failing in the free skate in major events after performing well on the first night. She said she didn't feel nervous and wasn't injured, it just wasn't her night.

But she looked nervous.

Slutskaya skated last, after Arakawa had followed Cohen's failure by skating a clean program. She wasn't spectacular, didn't bring down the house. She wasn't Sarah Hughes in Salt Lake City or Tara Lipinski in Nagano.

It was a nice routine and won her a rousing ovation from the crowd, but when she finished, nobody in the world had the immediate thought: "Now that was a gold-medal performance." Including, no doubt, Arakawa.

But Slutskaya, who could have blown Arakawa away by skating her own clean program, made it golden. She fell on a triple flip that she would later say is an everyday jump for her, a practice jump. Then she took other triple jumps out of her program and looked shaky as she struggled through her routine. Gone was Tuesday night's confident dynamo.

The Russian skating federation had protested Slutskaya's 2002 loss to Hughes, citing unobjective judging -- say it ain't so! She'd waited four years for her next Olympic chance and she came to Turin as the favorite. But when the lights were brightest, with her main rival having faltered, she faltered too.

And while Cohen was able to rally after her two mishaps and skate well, Slutskaya was lackluster. Cohen won the silver medal, referring to it later as "a gift" because she thought her mishaps had put her out of medals contention.

Slutskaya settled for a bronze that she reportedly threw into a locker after the medals ceremony. The bronze may have disgusted her, but she had no argument this time that she deserved better.

Next page: Coming through in the clutch. Not figure skaters. Curlers