updated 11:53 a.m. ET Feb. 13, 2006

TURIN, Italy - Americans can do all the throw triple axels they want. The Russians still own Olympic pairs when the free skate event begins on Monday.

Two-time world champions Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin skated in perfect unison to win the short program Saturday night at the Turin Games. They were so good the crowd was hushed for much of the performance, the near silence broken only by the sound of their blades majestically cutting through the ice.

And while U.S. champions Rena Inoue and John Baldwin landed the first throw triple axel in Olympic history to finish sixth, Totmianina and Marinin easily were the class of the event. They earned 68.64 points, with the highest totals for both technique and components.

The free skate is Monday night, when “Tot and Max” could become the 12th straight Russian or Soviet pair to win this Olympic title.

“Unbeatable, I would like to believe they’re unbeatable,” coach Oleg Vasiliev said. “But figure skating depends on many things — ice, judges, political situations.”

It was the first Olympic event under the code of points created in the wake of the 2002 pairs judging scandal. Three of the Salt Lake City gold medalists — Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia — are in Turin to watch the games.

Totmianina and Marinin skated as one to “Snowstorm” by Georgi Sviridov. Their side-by side triple toe loops were flawless, and they finished with a superb string of combination spins.

“I think it was the best performance of our short program this season,” she said.

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And they didn’t succumb to the pressure of keeping their nation’s golden streak going.

“I feel the atmosphere inside the ice rink was going up, so it was like a stone fell off my shoulders when we finished,” Marinin said. “It was just more concentration on the skating. Maybe that looks like I am really nervous, but it is not that.”

Inoue and Baldwin’s triple followed the one they did last month at U.S. nationals and helped get them 61.27 points.

“It felt fantastic, just what I wanted,” added Inoue, who revealed this week she had lung cancer in 1998, just 18 months after her father died of the disease.

In second place were China’s Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, whose routine to Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” rocked the nearly full arena. Then came Russians Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov, and China’s Pang Qing and Tong Jian, and Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo.

Zhang-Zhang began with an intricate one-armed lift that led to a big throw triple loop, energizing the crowd — particularly the Chinese fans who shook colorful rattles shaped like hands and held up banners supporting their skaters.

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The Zhangs, who are not related, closed with a huge double twist that could have been a quad if it was permitted, and a complex combination spin. The 2005 world bronze medalists slapped hands at the end, then saw a personal-best 64.72 points go up on the board.

That put them ahead until almost the end, when “Tot and Max” took the ice.

“We both have one aim,” Zhang Dan said. “We wanted to perform our best in the Olympic Games.”

Their countrymen, two-time world champions and Salt Lake City bronze medalists Shen and Hongbo, were happy simply to skate at all.

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