TURIN, Feb. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Shizuka Arakawa of Japan upheld an Olympic free skating tradition, toppling the favourites as she overshadowed Irina Slutskaya of Russia and Sasha Cohen of the United States to win Asia's first Olympic gold in figure skating here on Thursday.

    The Japanese skater who ranked third after the short program, surged ahead to leapfrog pace setters Cohen and Slutskaya with a mesmerizing free program, storming over silver medalist Cohen by 7.98 points, and Slutskaya 9.9 points.

    Slutskaya, the silver medalist in the Salt Lake City Games, conceded to the bronze medal this time, failing to complete Russia's sweeping of all four figure skating titles at the Turin Games. Her compatriots have earlier won the pairs, the men's and the ice dance.

    Arakawa, the world champion in 2004, opened with a flawless triple lutz-triple loop, a triple salchow-double toeloop as well as the beautiful flying camel spin.

    "I hope this will be an inspiration for the future generation of skaters," Arakawa said.

    Of the figure skating, Russia dominated the medal standing with three golds, followed by Japan with one gold. The United States had two silvers while China won one silver and one bronze in the pairs.

    Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Aarinin, the two-time world champions, initiated Russia's bid for a historic title sweep by claiming the pairs gold in Turin. Nevertheless, the Chinese skaters stole the limelight.

    As the Russians have claimed 12 Olympic pairs titles in a row, three Chinese pairs finished in the top four and Zhang Dan and Zhan Hao claimed China's first figure skating silver medal in the Olympic after a heavy fall on their opening jump in the free skating.

    Zhang Dan injured her left knee when attempting an unprecedented quadruple throw. She opened the jump too early, cameout forward and fell hard, hitting her knee and sliding against the boards.

    Zhang Dan and Zhan Hao re-started again to complete their program, picking up 125.01 points, slightly more than their previous personal best of 124.36, to keep their second place finish with a total of 189.73 points. They lagged behind the winners by 17.45 points.

    "I don't think it is so important to break the monopoly of the Russians. It is not our purpose to come here. We love this sport so we skate. We still have much things to learn from them, especially in coaching," Chinese coach Yao Bin said at a press conference.

    "There are some good younger skaters in China. Yao will coach them into the next Olympic Games," said Ren Hongguo, an official of the Chinese delegation.

    However, Totmianina warned that more Russian pairs would emerge in the international scenery as they have decided to retire after the Turin Games. "We have so many young pairs in Russia and we should work just a little bit harder," she said.

    Evgeni Plushenko, the silver medalist in the Salt Lake City Games, had a strong show to add his name to the Olympic history that Russia has won the men's gold medal in five straight Olympics.

    The men's competition was Plushenko's personal game as he won by 10 points in the short program and produced an amazing "Godfather" program in the free skating to catch the gold.

    Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov won the ice dancing for Russia. They led the original and free dances after a second place finish behind Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio of Italy in the compulsories.

    Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto snapped the medals drought for the United States since the 1976 Games as they won its first-ever silver in the ice dancing.

    Neither controversy nor scandal had ever been raised over Russia's golds this time as the International Skating Union changed its scoring system, and conducted it for the first time inthe Olympics.

    According to the new system, each technical element has a valuebased on its difficulty and skaters are graded on how well they execute them.

    Judges also give five component marks evaluating things like skating skills, transitions and choreography. Those are totaled, then added to the technical score for one grand total.Enditem