TURIN, Italy - The beige-covered ankle was bending ... bending ... bending ... toward the ice.

The momentary gasp that swept through Palavela sounded like a question.

Would Sasha Cohen bend with it?

Would she fall off this teetering double axel onto another frozen Olympic dream?

Would she lose this jump, as she's so often lost her focus, her fearlessness, her fight?

Four years ago, she's sitting in chips.

Two years ago, she's wearing a Zamboni leotard.

Tuesday night, with every ounce of her 95-pound body, she stood firm and silently screamed.

Not here. Not now. Not anymore.

“I thought, `I'm gonna land this,' ” Cohen said.

Her ankle listened. Millions of viewers saw. Irina Slutskaya scowled.

And Wednesday, instead of waking up four more years away from an Olympic gold medal, Alexandra Pauline Cohen is just four minutes away after a brilliant short program that gave her the lead at halftime of the Olympic Super Bowl.

Skating to a Russian folk song, “Dark Eyes,” she was all goodness and light, flying through four jumps, gliding through perfect spirals.

And then, at the end, not to be too technical about it, she did this really cool thing where she cocked her leg and spun like a top.

“I thought it was a good start, a very good start,” said John Nicks, Cohen's coach. “But it was only a start.”

Entering Thursday's deciding long program, Cohen holds less than a one-point lead over Russian favorite Slutskaya and former Japanese world champion Shizuka Arakawa, but Nicks knows that the most important number is three.

Three times, Cohen has held short-program leads in major championships and blown them.

In the last three Olympics, the leader of the short program has not won the gold medal.

“It's like we say, you can't win it during the short program, you can only lose it during the short program,” said Pam Gregory, coach of American kid Kimmie Meissner, who is stunningly in fifth place.

But hasn't that always been Cohen's problem? Losing it? Especially under pressure?

Nobody faced more heat Tuesday than the smallest woman in the flame.

Cohen was the last of the 29 skaters. She didn't take the ice until nearly 11:30 p.m. local time. By then, defending world champion and leader Slutskaya was warm and dry and pouting.

Working a dozen skaters after the Russian, Cohen brushed Slutskaya's intensity into a more dazzling portrait.

Where Slutskaya was dark - from bodysuit to expression - Cohen dressed and smiled like the tropics.

Where Slutskaya's spins were the grinding of a cog, Cohen's were like the flitting of a butterfly.

Where Slutskaya shoved her act at the judges, Cohen gleefully sold hers, again and again.

The woman now in first place has the shakiest history, the barest championship cupboard and, with her fellow American Olympians embarrassing themselves all around her, perhaps the most pressure.

It's enough to make a body bend ... bend ... bend.

Will Sasha Cohen break?

It is a question she will have to endure for only four more minutes, with a chance to provide an answer that will last a lifetime.