Cohen’s Solid Showing Is Tops at Skate America

Sasha Cohen has found the formula for winning Grand Prix events: She simply stops thinking and starts skating.

Cohen won her third Grand Prix competition and her first Skate America title Saturday night with a solid and swift free-skate program at Reading, Pa. The American, who turns 19 today, won the overall series title in 2002.

“The biggest thing I know is I can do it,” Cohen said. “I just have to turn my brain off and let my body do the work.”

The work wasn’t overwhelming, but it’s early in the season. Cohen two-footed a triple flip, had a shaky landing on a triple loop and was a bit out of sync with her music from “Swan Lake.”

Cohen easily outdistanced the field, earning 197.35 points in winning the short program and free skate. Jennifer Kirk finished second.

Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto became the first U.S. ice dance team to win a Grand Prix event in six years.

Belbin and Agosto easily won the free dance with a rousing performance to music from “West Side Story.”

They defeated Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov of Ukraine, who won the compulsories, and Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France, who were first in the original dance, for the championship.

Belbin and Agosto, ranked seventh in the world, were able to make something of a breakthrough. It was their most significant victory since they won the world junior championship in 2002, and their biggest as seniors.

Tennis

Top-seeded Andy Roddick was upset by David Nalbandian, 7-5, 7-5, in the semifinals of the Swiss Indoors at Basel.

It was a rematch of the U.S. Open semifinals, where Roddick overcame a two-set deficit and a match point to win en route to his first Grand Slam title.

Nalbandian will play Guillermo Coria today in an all-Argentine final. Coria defeated Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, 6-4, 6-4, in the other semifinal.

Fifth-seeded Mardy Fish defeated Thomas Enqvist of Sweden, 6-4, 7-5, and local wild-card entry Robin Soderling defeated Davide Sanguinetti of Italy, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5), in the semifinals of the Stockholm Open.

Top-seeded Rainer Schuetter of Germany lost to Sargis Sargsian of Armenia, 6-3, 6-3, and third-seeded Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil defeated Alex Corretja of Spain, 6-4, 6-3, in the semifinals of the St. Petersburg Open in Russia.

Kim Clijsters of Belgium defeated 16-year-old Maria Sharapova of Russia, 6-0, 6-3, and Chanda Rubin defeated Marlene Weingartner of Germany, 6-2, 7-5, in the semifinals of the SEAT Open at Luxembourg.

Fourth-seeded Nadia Petrova of Russia reached her first career WTA Tour final by beating Patty Schnyder of Switzerland, 6-2, 6-2, and second-seeded Ai Sugiyama of Japan beat third-seeded Vera Zvonareva of Russia, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, in the semifinals of the Generali Open at Linz, Austria.

Zack Fleishman defeated Paul Goldstein, 6-4, 6-4, and Dmitry Tursunov of Russia had to retire because of an injury and lost to Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia, 6-3, 5-2, in the semifinals of the USTA $50,000 Men’s Challenger at the West End Tennis & Racquet Club in Torrance.

Motor Racing

Greg Biffle passed Michael Waltrip for the lead with 10 laps to go to win the Aaron’s 312 at Atlanta Motor Speedway at Hampton, Ga., his second victory in the last three Busch Series races.

Biffle, whose Chevrolet crew changed a flat tire on the starting grid, became the first Busch driver to win from the pole at Atlanta since Jeff Gordon in the inaugural race in 1992.

David Green finished eighth in a Pontiac and took the points lead from Brian Vickers, who fell off the pace in a Chevrolet after an early spin and finished 31st, 14 laps down.

Green leads Scott Riggs by 13 points; Vickers is fifth, 49 points behind the leader.

Fred Behr Jr. of Indianapolis won the inaugural Pick-Your-Part California State Figure-8 Championship in front of a sellout crowd of 6,500 at Irwindale Speedway.

Baseball

The Oakland A’s have refused to allow General Manager Billy Beane to speak to the Seattle Mariners about an open front-office position.

The Mariners refused to comment Saturday.

The A’s have granted the New York Mets permission to speak to pitching coach Rick Peterson regarding the Mets’ vacant pitching coach job.

Oakland has finished in the top three in the American League in earned-run average in each of the last five seasons.

Miscellany

Martina Ertl of Germany opened the World Cup season by winning a giant slalom at Soelden, Austria, her first victory in three years. Ertl had a two-run time of 2 minutes 31.86 seconds in earning her 14th World Cup victory.... Peter Larsson of Sweden and Gabriela Paruzzi of Italy won the men’s and women’s 1-kilometer sprints, respectively, at Duesseldorf, Germany, in the first World Cup cross-country event this season.

Hall of Fame jockey and current Santa Anita General Manager Chris McCarron will receive the 2003 Great Ones Award tonight at the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The NFL is rechecking players’ drug tests to look for the newly identified steroid THG.

The steroid, at the center of an investigation by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, previously was undetectable.

“We said we would be testing for it and we are,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

Passings

Veikko Hakulinen, a Finnish cross-country skier who won three Olympic gold medals, died after being hit by a car in Helsinki, Finland. He was 78.