Two-time Olympic defending champion Germany lagged one second behind after two runners but stormed ahead the rest of the way, forging a 20-second victory in the men's biathlon relay at the Nagano Olympic Winter Games on Saturday.

Ricco Gross, Peter Sendel, Sven Fischer and Frank Luck combined in the 4 x 7.5-kilometer relay for a winning time of 1 hour, 21 minutes, 36.2 seconds over the tough Nozawa Onsen course in a light snow for Germany's third consecutive gold medal in the relay event.

Germany, which led the Nagano medals tally with a total of 28 as of Saturday afternoon, closed out the biathlon competition with its second gold medal -- after a victory in the women's relay -- and fifth biathlon medal overall

Norway, with individual gold medalists Halvard Hanevold and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen on its team, earned the silver with a time of 1:21:56.3, while Russia took the bronze at 1:22:19.3.

German lead-off racer Gross, on his way to a third consecutive gold medal in the relay, gave his country an 8.9-second lead over Latvia at the exchange.

Ilmars Bricis, a member of Latvia's 16th place relay teams in Albertville and Lillehammer, however, outran German team newcomer Peter Sendel with Saturday's best lap time of 19:46.7.

Germany's Fischer, a member of the Lillehammer gold medal team, regained the lead and opened it to 10 seconds ahead of second-place Russia. Luck closed with a workmanlike effort to secure the gold.

Norway's anchor Bjoerndalen, 10-km sprint gold medalist in Nagano, turned in the second-best time of the day at 19:48.8 to edge Russia out for the silver. (Kyodo News)

Results of biathlon men's 4x7.5-kilometer relay Saturday at the 18th Olympic Winter Games at Biathlon Venue, Nozawa Onsen, Nagano Prefecture:

1. Germany (Ricco Gross, Peter Sendel, Sven Fischer, Frank Luck)

1 hour, 21 minutes 36.2 seconds

2. Norway (Egil Gjelland, Halvard Hanevold, Dag Bjoerndalen, Ole Bjoerndalen) 1:21:56.3

3. Russia (Pavel Mouslimov, Vladimir Dratschev, Serguei Tarassov, Victor Maigourov) 1:22:19.3

4. Belarus (Aleksei Aidarov, Oleg Ryzhenkov, Aleksandr Popov, Vadim Sashurin) 1:23:14.0

5. Poland (Wieslaw Ziemianin, Tomasz Sikora, Jan Ziemianin, Wojciech Kozub) 1:24:09.8

6. Latvia (Olegs Maluhins, Ilmars Bricis, Gundars Upenieks, Jekabs Nakums) 1:24:24.4

7. France (Andreas Heymann, Raphael Poiree, Thierry Dusserre, Patrice Bailly-Salins) 1:24:53.0

8. Finland (Ville Raikkonen, Paavo Puurunen, Harri Eloranta, Olli-Pekka Peltola) 1:25:01.4

9. Italy (Patrick Favre, Wilfried Pallhuber, Rene Cattarinussi, Pier Carrara) 1:25:07.3

10. Sweden (Mikael Loefgren, Jonas Eriksson, Tord Wiksten, Fredrik Kuoppa) 1:25:25.7

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15. Japan (Kyoji Suga, Hironao Meguro, Shuichi Sekiya, Atsushi Kazama) 1:27:55.7

16. Kazakstan (Dimitriy Pantov, Dmitriy Pozdnyakov, Alexandr Menchshikov, Valeriy Ivanov) 1:27:56.0