COHEN SALVAGES DIGNITY, MEDAL.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

TURIN, Italy - On the first jump in the biggest performance of her life, Sasha Cohen fell.

On the second jump in the biggest performance of her life, Sasha Cohen stumbled so badly she had to put both hands on the ice to keep her feet under her.

Faster than you could say ``monstrous Olympic choke job,'' Sasha Cohen was off and blundering on a collapse of epic proportions. A meltdown to make Chernobyl look tame. On her way from potential champ to certain chump.

And then an amazing thing happened.

Sasha Cohen clawed back from disaster. She faced down despair. She fought back panic.

In a display of heart and guts, she was nearly flawless for the duration of her free program at the Turin Olympics on Thursday. And when the ice chips had fallen, and most of her competitors had, too, Cohen was rewarded.

With a silver medal.

She hadn't skated like a champion. Japan's Shizuka Arakawa did that. But Cohen persevered and competed like a champion.

``I somehow was able to block it out and pull myself together for the rest of the program,'' she said of the moments after her disastrous start. ``It was just one step at a time. I was able to believe when everything was really dark and gray.''

Cohen, the stylish little skater from Corona del Mar, was in first place after the short program. In position to give the U.S. its fourth women's skating gold in five Olympics.

But she was not in the best of shape. She skipped practice Wednesday. Before taking to the ice Thursday, she was mixing and matching over- the-counter painkillers.

She had her sore leg wrapped, trying to hold her groin and hamstring together.

Then she fell, twice, while attempting triple jumps during the warm-up for the final six skaters. When it was her turn to skate, she looked anything but confident. And for good reason.

``When you go out there and you know you have all the people watching and you know practice hasn't gone exactly right,'' she said, ``it's kind of hard to feel like you're getting churros at Disneyland. There's a lot going on.''

To wit: She knew this pressure-cooker of a roiling cauldron known as the Olympics free skate could potentially be a rough one.

Splat! On what was supposed to be a triple-double-double combination.

Bonk! On what was supposed to be a triple-double combination.

And now it was crunch time. Give up and die. Or fight back ... and probably die of embarrassment, anyway.

``It was very difficult because I wasn't coming back with an easy jump,'' she said. ``I was coming back with a triple loop, which I'd also slammed on the warmup.''

She nailed it. The crowd cheered, more from sympathy for a likely loser than out off appreciation for a looming medalist.

She did a Biellmann spin. A double axel. A triple lutz. And she was rolling. With the poise and elegance she had shown at the Palavela two nights before.

When she was finished, she had landed five triples. Two fewer than she planned, but five more than seemed likely over the first,horrible 30 seconds.

Still, Cohen figured she had salvaged her dignity more than won a medal. With four skaters still to come, she was sure she would be knocked off the podium.

``I took off my dress,'' she said. ``I changed. I really didn't think I would get a medal.''

Arakawa's strong performance, right after hers, did nothing to change that perception.

But then Fumie Suguri struggled and finished behind Cohen. As did Kimmie Meissner. And even Irina Slutskaya of Russia, gold-medal favorite, who also crashed and landed only four triples.

Said Cohen: ``I was surprised when I learned that I would be for sure getting the bronze, then even more surprised when I was going to get a silver medal.''

For Cohen, it was two sets of shocks in about 20 minutes. From getting up off the ice ... to climbing up onto the podium. She put the dress back on and went out and got her medal.

Perhaps she should have been champion. Some will say that. Aclean, not great program might have been enough. And she did nothing to dispel her reputation as a great short-program skater, a very shaky free-skater.

But given what happened on the first two jumps in the biggest performance of her life ... well, you may say Sasha Cohen lost the gold.

We prefer to think she won the silver.