GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) -- Mao Asada of Japan won the women's title at the World Figure Skating Championships on Thursday night, overcoming a big fall going into a planned triple axel.

Italy's Carolina Kostner won the silver, despite putting her hands down twice on jumps. South Korea's Kim Yu-na, who missed a competition last month because of a hip injury, took third.

Earlier Thursday, Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France widened their lead in the ice dancing competition.

Great things have been expected of Asada since she won the junior world title in 2005. She won the senior Grand Prix final the following year, and would have been a medal favorite at the Turin Olympics had she been old enough to compete. She was second at the world championships last year, and battled Kim for the top spot this year.

With Kim missing last month's Four Continents in her native South Korea because of injury, Asada arrived in Sweden as the woman to beat.

The audience groaned in synch when she slid into her opening jump, what was supposed to be the tough triple axel.

"My heart also stopped," Mao said, referring to her fall.

But the error was soon forgotten as she did six triple jumps, a double axel-double loop-double-loop combination and, in the final seconds, a double axel. She finished second to Kim in the free skate, but her total score of 185.56 points was enough to give her the gold.

Kostner had 184.68 points while Kim had 183.23 points.

Miki Ando, last year's world champion, withdrew two elements into her program because of a muscle strain and a partial rupture of her left leg. Cameras showed tears streaming down her face as she made the decision to quit.

In ice dance, Delobel and Schoenfelder are in good position to make their first world medal a gold one. With 107.98 points going into Friday's free dance, they have a four-point lead and Olympic silver medalists Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto are still stuck in fifth place.

Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski of Russia are now second, passing Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir in the original dance. But the margin between the two couples is slim, with the Russians just .45 points ahead: 103.97 to 103.52.

Belbin and Agosto came into worlds favored to become the first U.S. couple to win a world dance title. But a rare fall in compulsories dropped them to fifth place and, despite finishing fourth in the original dance, they weren't able to make up any ground in the standings.

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