Olympic silver medalists Zhang Dan/Zhang Hao put China on the gold medal block with the pair-skating championship Friday at the Winter Universiade in Turin, Italy.

The reigning champions proved the class of their own by collecting 181.87 points, beating the second-placed Ukraine's Tatiana Volosozhar/Stanislav Morozov by 31.67 points.

Italian Anna Cappellini/Luca Lanotte cheered the local audiences up with 165.24 points to win the gold medal of the ice dancing earlier.

Russian Anastasia Platonova/Andrei Maximishin pocketed the silver on 161.62 while France's Pernelle Carron/Mathieu Jost scored 160.54 on third.

Belarus' Sergei Novikov won the first biathlon gold medal as he timed one hour, two minutes and 41.8 seconds in the men's 20km event to let Belarus lead the medal table by two gold, one silver and one bronze.

In the women's 15km individual, Ukraine's Oksana Yakovleva sprinted first with a time of 1:04:49.9.

Austria won their second gold medal when Anna Natalia Rokita triumphed in the women's 3000m speed skating in 4:12:33.

The silver medal went to Katarzyna Wojcicka of Poland, winner of the 1500m on Thursday, who was just 0.35 seconds behind.

South Korean Lee Ju-Youn added a bronze to her silver medal from the 1, 500m, timing 4:13:45.

Ski jump set off at Pragelato with the first men's medals were awarded to Dmitry Ipatov of Russia who jumped 108 meters long.

The Russian set a record of the Normal Hill of Rivets, beating the previous 104.5 meters set by Ahonen Vassiliev at the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2007)