Isolde Kostner skated a personal best to give Italy its best-ever world championship result in Goteborg last night but had to settle for silver behind Mao Asada of Japan.
This improved on her precocious bronze as an 18-year-old in Moscow in 2005, when she repeated what Susan Driano had achieved 27 years before in Gotenborg.
Kostner, 21, fluffed a couple of jumps to finish less than a point behind Mao Asada - despite the Japanese's more evident fall in attempting a triple axel.
South Korea's Yu Na Kim was third.
Kostner is now an established star of world figure skating.
She was one of the favourites going into the 2006 Turin Olympics - where she was Italy's flagbearer at the opening ceremony - but nerves got the better of her in the end.
She partly made up for it in winning last year's European championships.
The skater, who is the daughter of a hockey international and a skater from the northern Italian region of Alto Adige (South Tyrol), was the second Kostner to carry the Olympic flag for Italy.
Her skiing cousin Isolde, twice world Superg champion, was the flag-bearer at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, when she won silver in the downhill.
