Chan and Chinese lead the way at figure skating worlds

Canada's Patrick Chan set a new world record in the men's short programme while China's Pang Qing and Tong Jian lead the pairs as the relocated World Figure Skating Championships officially got underway here on Wednesday. The competition should have taken place in Tokyo last month but was transferred to Moscow because of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin thanked the International Skating Union for choosing Moscow as the venue during the opening ceremony when a special tribute was paid to Japan. "These competitions were to take place in Japan, but we all know of the calamities that Japan is facing - the earthquake, the tsunami and the emergency situation at the nuclear plant. We know more than anyone else what this means. "We hope the government and the people of Japan will courageously face the trial," said Putin. Chan proved that he is determined to claim gold after finishing runner-up for the past two years. The 20-year-old achieved a world record 93.02 points to give himself a comfortable advantage on Japanese duo Nobunari Oda (81.81) and defending world champion Daisuke Takahashi (80.25) going into Thursday's free skating final. He overtook the previous mark of 91.30 achieved by 2006 Olympic champion Yevgeny Plushenko of Russia at the 2010 European championships. "To be able to achieve this, it is kind of a dream come true. The programme itself was excellent. I was really proud of myself," said Chan. Chan opened with a quadruple-triple toeloop combination and followed it with a triple axel in his jazzy routine "Take Five" by Paul Desmond. "I really took advantage of the extra month. It was a crucial time. I just kept doing what I was doing. I reinforced all my good habits over and over and just looked at the fine details and did my run through as I usually do. "What I did today is a little bit of foretelling for tomorrow and I'll repeat what I did and use the same kind of mental and physical approach as I did today," added Chan, winner of the Grand Prix Final. Takahashi, 25, admitted he would have an uphill battle to defend the title which saw him become the first Japanese skater to win last year. "I was shocked," said the Olympic bronze medallist of Chan's score. "But I understand that he had a quad in the short program and skated cleanly and he deserves it," added the Japanese skater. Skating to a collection from "King of the Mambo" Perez Prado, Takahashi lost points by not opting for a quad jump and stumbling on a step sequence. "Given the gap, I have to give my 100 percent and a perfect performance on the ice, but maybe tomorrow there will be a different wind. I don't know, there just might be a miracle. We'll see," he said. Oda opened his routine to Storm by Yoshida Brothers by stumbling on a quadruple toeloop jump and also hit a triple axel and triple lutz-triple toeloop combination. "I did know about Patrick's score. So I thought it must have been a wonderful performance," he said. "Then I knew I had to produce something in accordance with the very high level of expectation. "I think the most difficult part was of course to keep a good psychological stage in our training given the circumstances in Japan. "However I just focused on what I have been doing throughout the whole season and that kept my feelings on the same level." Defending champions Pang and Tong lead the pairs short programme by a narrow 1.02-point margin on Germany's Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, the 2008 and 2009 world champions who lost their title to the Chinese last year. Pang said: "It went really well today, all the elements were well done. Today's performance gives us confidence for the free skating tomorrow." Tong added: "We're just happy that this competition is takings place and that we were able to achieve a season's best score." The Olympic silver medallists from China scored 74.00 with Savchenko and Szolkowy achieving 72.98, and Russian newcomers Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov third with 70.35 ahead of Thursday's free skating final.