By the time Shizuka Arakawa arrived in the Italian commune of Tarvisio to contest the ladies' singles figure skating at the 2003 Winter Universiade, she had something to prove. 

As a child prodigy on the ice, she had competed at her home 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano at the age of 16, finishing 13th under the gaze of the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

In 1999, she won the Asian Winter Games title and the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002 began to look as if they might offer medal possibilities. However, she could only finish second in the Japanese National Championships and that meant she was not chosen for Utah.

In March 2000, Arakawa enrolled at Waseda University to undertake a bachelor's degree in social sciences. This allowed her the opportunity of competing in the International University Sports Federation's flagship winter event in 2003, knowing that she needed a positive performance to get her career back on track.

The performance duly arrived as she won both the short and free skating programmes to emerge as a clear winner ahead of Angela Lien of the United States and Canada's Lesley Hawker.

That year she also regained her Asian Winter Games title. It was a pivotal time for her, as, in 2004, just a few days after completing her graduation exams, she won the world title in Dortmund after landing seven clean triple jumps.

She was the third Japanese woman to win this title after the triumphs of Midori Ito in 1989 and Yuka Sato in 1994.

Arakawa had planned to retire after the 2004 World Championships, but her victory there convinced her to change her plans.

Her defence of her title in 2005 was a failure as she finished ninth, but the result acted as a spur to her and she pushed on to the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006 after changing her coach.

In Turin she finished third in the short programme behind pre-event favourites Sasha Cohen of the US and Russia's Irina Slutskaya, although the three were separated by less than a point.

In the long programme, Cohen was the first of the three leaders to skate and fell twice.

Arakawa held her nerve to finish almost eight points ahead of her US rival, although Cohen remained in silver position after Slutskaya also made several errors.

At 24, Arakawa became the oldest women's Olympic skating champion since Madge Cave Syers of Britain had earned the title at the 1908 London Games aged 27. She retired and went on to skate professionally.