Filip Bondy

TURIN, Italy - She has been here before, and knows it. Sasha Cohen has managed enough wonderful short programs, enough free skate flops, to fill a scrapbook or a scrap pile.

But this time will be different, Cohen insists. She skated those four minutes at nationals in St. Louis last month, maybe not perfectly, but without a tumble or terrible comeuppance. And she wasn’t feeling well, then. She feels so fine now, she hugged herself coming off the ice in first place Tuesday after her Olympic short program.

“I skated my long program at nationals when I was sick, and I can skate it better now,” Cohen said. “It’ll be like starting over.”

Cohen is the leader in the clubhouse going into Thursday, which means nothing when you consider that both Irina Slutskaya of Russia and Shizuka Arakawa of Japan are both within a point. Any three of those skaters can win the gold medal, very easily.

Cohen can take comfort in knowing now that judges will lean toward her over Slutskaya for sheer artistry. That little slight did not go unnoticed by Slutskaya, who is grumbling as she once did whenever she was placed behind rival Michelle Kwan.

Asked about the new scoring system, Slutskaya bristled.

“People don’t change,” she said. “We still have judges, people who push the buttons. It’s really hard to say what’s changed.”

Cohen can’t be as pleased about Arakawa, another former world champion, who did not skate a perfect short program, whose combination was off-balance and reduced from an ambitious triple-triple to a triple-double. Arakawa was still rewarded by judges for technically superior footwork on her jumps, and the Japanese skater may become a real problem if she stays on her skates.

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Cohen says she’s not thinking about any of that, not doing the math in her head. The hope is that maybe, finally, she has put in enough intense practice sessions to keep her upright on Thursday during her toughest elements.

“It’s been quality, not quantity,” said her coach John Nicks, about practices. “We’ve been working harder, not longer. Today for her was a good start, a very good start, but it was only a start.”

You can only do so much with Cohen, though, only prep her so much. There are two different kinds of figure skaters, Cohen was saying. Those who are “trained down to the finger nail,” and those improvisers who are never really sure what’s going to happen after the next chord progression.

“I feel the music,” Cohen said. “I love the attention. I love to dance. I love to move.”

And so Cohen dazzled and wiggled and leaped during her short program, went about the business of rescuing these Olympics from the feuding speedskaters and the flopping Bodes. Cohen was a graceful whir, an accomplished jock. She got 66.73 points for her trouble, in first place by a stylized hair after the short program.

These are not young teenagers at the top of the rankings, which is an interesting change of pace. Cohen is 21, Arakawa is 24, Slutskaya is 27. All three of them are spending substantial time in physical therapy at the athletes’ village, getting stared at for their makeup and their celebrity. Cohen ices her joints now after her routines, looking as much like an NBA player as a pixie.

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“Ice is maintenance, when you get to be my age,” Cohen said. “You’ve got to take care of your body.”

Her body has reason to ache, because Cohen’s programs remain competitively athletic. She is likely to attempt a triple-triple combination on Thursday. On Tuesday, she hit a triple-lutz-double-toe combination, nailed a triple loop. Once she landed her double axel, Cohen was free to frolic with her step sequences, to play the gypsy vamp.

“This was a really fun program,” she said. “I’m a gypsy, seductive playful. I love the attention.”

She will get plenty of that with a gold medal. Going into this competition, there was some concern that Americans might be shut out of the medals in this event for the first time since 1964. Now, a podium placement seems almost assured. Cohen is in first place, and there is a considerable gap, more than four points, between third and fourth-place skater Fumie Suguri.

“Everybody wants a gold medal,” Cohen said “It’s what you’re willing to put yourself through to get it. I think about it every day. Oh, it would be nice to take one of those home…”

She’s just four minutes away from fulfilling that materialistic yearning. She faces her demons, her long program, on Thursday.