The victory could well be a revenge for Italy's defeat against Russia in their group preliminaries.

In the final match, Italy, playing a tight defence game, gave their Russian rivals no chance to score. After two quarters of the game, the Italians has established four goals lead.

In the third and fourth quarters, the Russians sped up their attack, but they could only find it shot wide many times.

The Russians only managed to score one goal while Italians added the fifth to put acing on the cake.

In the play-off for the third place, Hungary defeated Yugoslavia 6-3.

In other matches of the day, Spain defeated Australia 5-3, the Netherlands edged Brazil 9-8, China outplayed Japan 9-8, Greece trounced South Korea 13-6.

(Xinhua News Agency 08/31/2001)