Norway's Ole Einar Bjoerndalen won a sixth Winter Olympics gold medal Friday when he anchored his country to victory in the 4x7.5km relay with Austria winning silver and Russia claiming bronze.

The 36-year-old grabbed his sixth gold after winning all four available biathlon titles at Salt Lake City, plus a single gold from Nagano in 1998.

He brought Norway home in one hour 21mins, 38.1sec.

Austria finished second at one hour 22mins 16.7sec while Russia were just behind at one hour 22mins 16.9sec.

Having already won silver in the 20km individual here, Bjoerndalen helped Norway go out on a high in the final biathlon event of the Games to make up for his "terrible" disappointment of 27th in Sunday's mass start.

On the first of Bjoerndalen's two visits to the shooting range, the Norwegian legend needed two extra bullets to account for all five targets in the prone position, but was flawless on the second visit in the standing position.

Bjoerndalen opened a gap of more than 12 seconds after his first range visit and then set about extending it.

Austria were in medal contention throughout, having been in the top three for the duration with Simon Eder skiing a strong first leg, but anchor Christoph Sumann was 45.6sec behind Bjoerndalen leaving the shooting range for the last time.

With his masses of experience, the Norwegian picked up his national flag on the last lap with obvious delight as the Scandinavians claimed their eightth gold medal in Vancouver.

AFP