It means the Central Asian powerhouse have now secured four of the five gold medals won in the sport so far.

Today’s result also showed good squad depth as the Kazakh “B” team finished just 14 seconds behind their first choice counterparts after over an hour of racing at the Nishioka Biathlon Stadium.

Sprint and pursuit champion Galina Vishnevskaya made it three golds from as many events with a superb opening leg in a format which saw two women race six kilometres before two men each covered 7.5km.

She came in 14 seconds clear of Alina Raikova in 17 min 50.30 before Darya Ussanova increased this to 50.4sec against Anna Kistanova.

With 10km sprint gold medal winner Yan Savitsky on their anchor leg, the result seemed sown up by this point.

But Vassily Podkorytov, who came second behind Savitsky in the sprint event, had other ideas.

The "B" team member managed the fastest men's leg of 19:03.30 to cut the gap to Maxim Braun by 29sec. 

Anton Pantov then clocked 19:32.80 to close the gap further on Savitsky, who crossed the line in 19:54.10.

It proved enough for his team to win, however, in 1:15:40.30.

The Kazakh second team clocked 1:15:54.50.

Fuyuko Tachizaki, Yurie Tanaka, Mikita Tachizaki and Tsukasa Kobonoki finished a distant third for Japan in 1:18.25.10.

The result marked a fourth biathlon gold of the Games for Kazakhstan after the team were detained by police in Hochfilzen, amid doping suspicions during this month's World Championships.

According to Austrian authorities, a "significant volume" of items such as drugs, mobile phones and medical equipment were seized by 30 officials as part of the raid.

But all 10 team members - including Savitsky and Vishnevskaya - subsequently passed drugs tests as no evidence was found by the police.

The International Biathlon Union (IBU) subsequently said that they were not planning any disciplinary action.

But the Kazakh team claims the Austrian police have still not returned confiscated equipment including laptops and mobile phones.