Cross-country skiing-Russians storm to relay gold as Germany snag sensational silver

ZHANGJIAKOU, China :The Russian Olympic Committee delivered a dominant display to win the 4x5km relay on Saturday, with Germany fending off the superpowers of the sport to take a sensational silver - their first ever Olympic cross-country medal.

Sweden secured bronze, as individual sprint champion Jonna Sundling made up ground after a poor third leg by Frida Karlsson to beat Finland's Krista Parmakoski in a sprint for third place.

The race will go down as one of the greatest Olympic days for Germany's women on the cross-country trails, as they broke early along with the Russians and combined power and courage to hang on for a scarcely believable second place.

The four legs of the race were split, with the first two in the classic style and the second two freestyle, as each racer from the 18 teams completed two laps of the 2.5km track.

Norway's hopes suffered an early blow as Tiril Weng fell following a collision with Latvian rival Patricija Eiduka, but her team managed to battle their way back into contention before falling away again late on.

The Russians took an early lead through Yulia Stupak, who led 12.9 seconds ahead of Sweden's Dahlqvist after her first lap. However, she was reined in by the unlikely figure of Katherine Sauerbrey of Germany by the first exchange as the Germans showed they were not here just to make up the numbers.

Sauerbrey's team mate Katharina Hennig made a surprise break midway through her second lap to leave Natalia Nepryaeva in her wake, building up a lead of 4.3 seconds at the second exchange, with the top seven teams all within 30 seconds of the leaders.

The chasing pack was whittled down to three during the third leg, with Swede Frida Karlsson, Finland's Kerttu Niskanen and Norway's Helene