Yang Yang took a comfortable victory in the women's 1,500-meter race while no male Chinese skaters shone on the opening day of the World Cup short track speed skating on November 26 in Nobeyama, Japan.

Yang, known as Yang Yang (A) from Heilongjiang Province differentiated to another Chinese skater of the same name from Jilin Province, clocked two minutes and 34.0966 seconds to win the race.

The defending world champion, 23, won the 500m, 1,000m, 3,000m and the 3,000m relay at the world championships in March, is definitely the skater to beat in this season.

Bulgaria's Evgenia Radanova surprised everybody to take the second place, followed by South Korea's Choi Min-Kyung.

With Chinese women's team lived up to its expectation, the counterpart had only one skater through into the final and An Yulong finished the last one of the six-man race.

World overall champion Li Jiajun of China, also the winner of the 500m, 3,000m and 5,000m relay in Sofia in March, finished a disappointed third place in the semi-finals and did not make the final appearance.

Japan's Satoru Terao celebrated his first win of the season with a time of 2:23.310 with South Korean Kim Dong-Sung and Canadian Francois-Louis Tremblay at second and third respectively. (Xinhua)