Lesun trailed China's Jianli Guo after the final round of shooting in the climactic combined event, but his running power on the final 800 metre  circuit earned him a 10 second advantage.

Guo took silver with his partner Qian Chen.

Lithuania's pairing of world number ones, Laura Asadauskaite and Justinas Kinderis, who began the combined event in tenth place, 65 seconds behind the leading Russians, eventually took bronze as they closed the gap on the eventual winners to 32 seconds.

Khuraskina and Lesun took an early lead after winning the fencing with 30 victories out of 44 bouts, with the Belarus pairing of Tatsiana Yelizarova and Stanislau Zhurauliou second with only one less victory.

The Chinese pairing were equal third on 25 wins with South Korea's Soo Jin Yang and Woojin Hwang.

Lithuania's Justinas Kinderis, pictured at the London 2012 Games, finished strongly with his fellow world No1 Laura Asadauskaite to take bronze in Sarasota ©Getty Images

China took third place to themselves after winning the swimming event in 1min 55,59sec, 1.12 ahead of the South Koreans, with third place going to Italy's pairing of Alice Sotero and Riccardo De Luca.

The Belarus pairing outperformed Russian in the pool to take the overall lead going into the equestrian phase, but 26 penalty points there dropped them down to fourth place before the combined event.

China moved up to second place overall after finishing joint top with Victoria Tereshuk and Pavlo Tymoschenko of Ukraine on the maximum score of 300 points, with Korea moving up to third place overall.

Going into the combined, Khuraskina had only a two second start on Chen and a 13-second advantage over Yang.

The Russian and the Chinese competitors ran together for their entire leg and together before handing over to Lesun and Guo.

The Chinese athlete was shooting better and faster than the Russian, but the individual gold medallist was gaining an advantage in running and, though he left the shooting range a few moments after Guo, he managed to cross the finish line 10 seconds before him.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
June 2014: Russian Lesun leads modern pentathlon World Cup final from start to finish
June 2014: Nowacka maintains fine World Cup form to win final in Sarasota ahead of Asadauskaite
June 2014: Modern pentathlon's top performer Asadauskaite faces home challenge in Sarasota World Cup final
December 2013: Florida to host major modern pentathlon events in RIo 2016 build-up