The quartet of Uliana Kaisheva, Victoria Slivko, Dmitrii Shamaev and Alexander Povarnitsyn took gold in a time of 1 hour 15min 24.0sec with one penalty lap to clinch a narrow win over France.

The French team, boasting both junior 15km and junior 10km sprint champions in Aristide Bègue and Fabien Claude as well as Emily Battendier and Lena Arnaud, finished just 8.2 seconds behind the eventual winners as they continued their impressive form at the event.

Ukraine rounded off the podium 39.8 seconds off the pace, while Austria claimed fourth, host nation Estonia were fifth and Poland came in sixth.

The result adds to Russia's medal haul as Alexey Slopov and Ekaterina Shumilova both enjoyed individual triumphs in their respective senior pursuit competitions yesterday.

Despite 11 teams competing in the race, the eventual top three signalled their intentions from the outset and even at an early stage it was clear one of those teams would take gold.

Russia edged out France and Ukraine to take gold in the junior mixed relay ©IBU



Russia and France both shot clean and at a quick pace after the third standing stage which left Ukraine trailing behind, before Bègue demonstrated the poise and technique that saw him claim the 15km individual title as he led at the end of the third exchange.

Ukraine's Maksym Ivko managed to claw back some of the deficit and he was hot on the heels of Shamaev, but in the last prone, he used three spares while his Russian and French counterparts were fast and clean, which meant it would come down to the final standing.

Povarnitsyn of Russia and Fabien Claude of France both made mistakes and had to go to the penalty loop and although Ukranian Anton Myhda demonstrated deadly accuracy, he could do little about the Russian's recovery as Povarnitsyn stormed home to seal a superb victory for his nation.

The event concludes tomorrow with the women's 4x6km relay and the men's 4x7.5km relay.

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