Zhao Hongbo's foot injury might cost the Chinese top pair's world championships victory but Shen Xue said they would be satisfied as long as they tried their best in Moscow.

The 2002 and 2003 figure skating world pairs winners from Chinafinished third in Monday's short program, scoring 66.00 points fortheir serene routine to Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune. Russia's defending champions Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin led the field with 70.12 while compatriots Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov were more than three points off the pace. The free skate is Wednesday.

Shen admitted that Zhao's injury worked against them during thecompetition and might cost their victory.

"Hongbo's injury is getting worse. All of us are not optimistic," said the 26-year-old. "He spends much time freezing foot with ice bags and starts training and competition until it become numb so that the injury is not too painful for him."

"But we will do our best. Our minds are not set on gold medal but on how to bring out the best of us," she said, adding that shealso had a treatment on her foot in Beijing prior to the worlds.

"What I should do now is to give Hongbo more smiles," she said.

Zhao's injury had forced the pair to withdrew from the 2005 Four Continents Championships, won by compatriots Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang who were in fourth place here.

The 2004 world championships bronze medallists Qing Pang and Jian Tong were a few hundredths of a point behind in fifth.

Editor: Donald