Margaglio overcame a knee injury and Fusar-Poli shrugged off some problems with her dress to take the title and prevent the Russians, who won three titles on Saturday, from sweeping all four events on home ice.

The world silver medallists received top marks from all seven judges despite being forced to stop midway through their free dance after several ribbons from Fusar-Poli's dress fell on the ice.

After a short break they were able to finish their routine.

"This problem with my dress happened only once before - last year here in St Petersburg, but then the pieces fell off after just 10 seconds of skating and we were able to restart again," Fusar-Poli said.

Margaglio said: "I first injured my knee two months ago and this morning during warm-up I just bent it a little too much and felt pain again. But I got an injection, put on a knee brace and was able to skate."

Despite the problems, the Italians, coached by Russia's Tatyana Tarasova, came out comfortably ahead of Russian champions Irina Lobacheva and Ilya Averbukh.

Israeli couple Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovsky, who are also trained by Tarasova, finished third.

"We're extremely happy with our performance today," said Lobacheva. "After a disastrous last season we just wanted to show our new programme to the audience and the judges.

"We also felt very tired today because yesterday's competition finished very late and Ilya couldn't sleep for almost the entire night."

On Saturday, the Russians claimed three titles with Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze taking the pairs' crown while Evgeny Plushchenko and Irina Slutskaya winning the men's and women's competition respectively.