TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's newly crowned world figure skating champion Mao Asada has reason to be feeling old at the age of 17.
Despite just picking up the coveted title, she knows that next year there will be a batch of talented US juniors stepping into full senior competition who will be hoping to take her medal off her at the next worlds.
"There will be many (US) girls who are younger than I am and have never competed in the world championships," Asada said Tuesday on her return from the Swedish city of Gothenburg where she won her title last week.
"I want to go all-out like they do and not be defeated," she added.
Next year's world championships in Los Angeles will feature American teenagers who were too young to compete at this year's event, as the age limit is higher than that for national competitions.
They include Japanese-American Mirai Nagasu, 14, who won the senior US women's championship in January, her runner-up Rachel Flatt, 15, and world junior champion Caroline Zhang, 14, who finished fourth at the Grand Prix Final in December.
"I normally try not to think about them too much," said the pony-tailed Asada, who stands 162 centimetres (5 feet 4 inches). "But in training I think about them because it helps me push myself."
Hidehito Ito, figure skating director at the Japan Skating Federation, agreed that the new generation of US girls threatens Japan's hold on the women's singles, which they have dominated since Shizuka Arakawa won at the 2006 Turin Olympics.
"They can all jump triple-triple combinations. Asada must land two solid triple-triple combinations in free skating," he said.
At Gothenburg, Asada fell at the start of her free programme on her take-off for a 3.5-revolution triple axel, a difficult jump which has been mastered by only a few female skaters.
But she recovered brilliantly to land a triple-triple in her next jump to Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu. She under-rotated a second jump in her triple-triple combination towards the end of the programme but still took the title.
She beat Italy's Carolina Kostner, who had led after the short programme, into second spot. South Korea's Kim Yu-Na, hit by hip injury, skated the best free programme but finished third overall for the second year running.
Asada became Japan's fifth women's world champion after Midori Ito (1989), Yuka Sato (1994), Shizuka Arakawa (2004) and Miki Ando (2007).
"In the short programme this year, I took on a theme with a maturity which I had lacked," said Asada, who was runner-up to Ando last year in her first worlds.
"I think I can continue to improve a lot more ahead of Vancouver by making jumps with higher quality, accelerating the speed of my spins and being more expressive," she added.
Aside from the rising American teens, Asada's rivalry with Kim, who won her second straight Grand Prix Final in December, seems certain to continue into their first Olympics in Vancouver, Canada in 2010.
For the Turin Games, both Asada and Kim, then 15, were three months too young to be eligible.
"We have been encouraging each other in improving our techniques by competing together since our junior days," Kim recently told Japanese media. "Asada is like me as she jumps well and trains very hard."
