The 21-year-old was tied with compatriots Petter Northug Jr, who won two gold medals at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and Martin Johnsrud Sundby, who claimed three medals at Sochi 2014, on six wins in a single season before the turn of the year prior to today's 15 kilometre pursuit win in Italy.

Russia's Sergey Ustiugov had been leading the way for much of today's race and pulled ahead of the front-runners on the third lap of the race.

However, Klæbo was able to match the Russian's pace and he eventually pulled ahead to secure victory in a time of 33mins 31.1sec.

Klæbo is now leading the overall World Cup standings by an incredible 250 points over Russia's Alexander Bolshunov going into the Christmas break.

Ustiugov, who won five medals at the 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland, took silver, finishing 1.9 seconds behind Klæbo while Alexey Poltoranin of Kazakhstan claimed bronze, crossing the line 2.6 seconds later.

This was Poltoranin's first podium finish since January 2016, when he took bronze in the Tour de Ski event in Val di Fiemme, Italy.

After his record-breaking seventh win, Klæbo said: "I'm happy to be back on the podium.

"My plan was to go out hard from the beginning to close the gap and it worked very well.

"When I was together with the group I was confident I could ski for a podium.

"I wanted to decide the race a little bit before the stadium."

The women's event also saw a Norwegian athlete take gold as six-time Olympic champion Marit Bjørgen came out on top in the 10km pursuit in a time of 25:19.3.

Bjørgen was 22 seconds behind overall race leader Charlotte Kalla of Sweden but managed to overcome the gap during the first lap before going on to take the title.

After her win, the 37-year-old said: "After my performance yesterday I was not quite sure where my shape was, but my plan was to close the gap on Charlotte by the end of the first lap, which I did.

"It is great to win again and head to the Christmas break with a victory."

Norwegian athletes also took the other two places on the podium through Ingvlid Flugstad Østberg and Heidi Weng, who finished just 0.3 and 0.8 seconds behind Bjørgen respectively.

Despite finishing sixth in today’s race, Kalla still heads the overall leaderboard on 610 points, 98 ahead of Østberg in second.

The World Cup season will resume in Lenzerheide on Switzerland on December 30.