Sweden won the men's cross-country skiing relay on Wednesday after Marcus Hellner pulled away on the last leg for his second gold medal of the Olympics.

Hellner broke away from Emmanuel Jonnier of France and Martin Koukal of the Czech Republic on the final lap, quickly building a 15-second lead to decide the race with a couple of kilometres to go.

Entering the ski stadium alone, he had plenty of time to grab a Swedish flag to wave as he paraded down the final straight, slowing his pace to a crawl to enjoy the moment.

"It was wonderful, getting to parade into the finish," Hellner said. "It's something we've all dreamed about doing. It's perfect, we couldn't ask for anything more."

The Swedish team of Daniel Richardsson, Johan Olsson, Anders Soedergren and Hellner finished the 4x10km race in one hour, 45 minutes, 5.4 seconds for its first relay gold since 1988.

Petter Northug used a furious final leg to secure silver for Norway, beating Jonnier and Koukal in a sprint to finish 15.9 seconds behind Hellner. The Czechs took the bronze, 16.5 seconds back, as the French ended up fourth.

Norway were the favourite in the race because of Northug's unrivalled closing ability, but he started 37.5 seconds behind Hellner on the final leg, which proved too tall of an order even for him.

Northug set a blistering pace from the start to pull within eyesight of the leading trio after two laps, but never came any closer to Hellner.

The Swede, who won the 30K pursuit, had saved enough energy to increase his pace as he entered the final lap, quickly pulling away from his French and Czech rivals and preventing Northug to ever get in position to use his sprinting ability at the end.

AP