The team of Aleksander Lesun and Donata Rimsaite delighted the home crowd as they beat China's Xiaonan Zhang and Jiahao Han into silver with Belarus duo Anastasiya Prokopenko and Ilya Palazkov taking bronze.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lesun, who was born in Belarus, made the podium for the second time at the event after earning silver in the men's individual competition.

He has now won ten World Championship medals in his career, with his three golds including the 2012 individual title from Rome.

“We’re very happy," said Rimsaite, who won individual World Championship bronze in 2013.

"It was a perfect day and we would like to say a big thank you to the fans and to the crowd.”

Latvia's Elena Rublevska and Pavels Svecovs claimed 34 wins to lead after the fencing ranking round, with Russia claiming victory in 29 bouts to lie joint second with the Czech Republic.

The swimming honours went to Ireland's Eanna Bailey and Sive Brassil who clocked a time of 1min 46:90sec, as the Russian pair finished 12th in 2:01.60.

An eventful riding section saw many fall from their horses but it was the Russians who came out on top with Poland and Belarus following behind.

It meant the home hopefuls led going into the combined shoot/run with an 11 second lead over Rublevska and Svecovs.

The Latvians fell out of contention, however, after a difficult second shoot and had to make do with sixth overall.

Lesun had no such troubles, leaving the range after a blistering 6.94 seconds on lap three to all but confirm his team's gold medal.

Belarus were the big movers, moving up into the medal places after an eighth place start.

Dr Klaus Schormann, President of International Modern Pentathlon Federation (UIPM), said: “We could not have had a better final to finish off the 2016 World Championships here in Moscow.

"This has been one of the best performances we have seen over the last few days and there has been such drama.

“Russia invested a lot and, in the end, there was a gold medal.

"I think they deserve this and the athletes have shown that they like the relay and it gives us a very different kind of performance.”