France's Martin Fourcade gave another brilliant display of skiing and shooting to erase a big German lead and claim the Olympic gold for his team in the Olympic biathlon mixed relay on Tuesday.

France's greatest Olympian destroyed Germany's Arnd Peiffer over the final leg to win by 20.9 seconds and collect his third gold medal of the Games and fifth overall.

Norway took the silver and Italy bronze in a thrilling sprint finish that saw the Germans missing the podium despite dominating for much of the race.

Germany's Laura Dahlmeier, who has already collected two gold medals in Pyeongchang, left the Germans in a prime position at the end of the second leg, but with Fourcade anchoring the race for France, no one in the field could feel safe.

After being over half-a-minute behind, Fourcade shot clean on his first visit to the range to cut the lead down to six seconds and then chased down Peiffer, passing him comfortably on a tough uphill stretch.

Shoulder to shoulder with Peiffer on the range for his last shoot, each of the Frenchman's five shots was greeted with joyous cheers form the crowd, while the German's errant shooting saw his team slide down the rankings as Fourcade cruised to victory.

Johannes Thingnes Boe used his powerful skiing to drag Norway back into medal contention after two poor first legs, and Emil Hegle Svendsen finished the job to secure the silver.

Peiffer's woes on the range thrust him into a battle for bronze with Italy's Dominick Windisch, who sprinted past the German to take bronze for the Italians by three-tenths of a second.