A gold by Germany's men's biathlon relay team put them top of the Winter Olympics medals table yesterday morning as the Austrian team were hit by a new raid by Italian police.
The race for the top spot in the medals table is heating up with four countries in the hunt to take top honors.
But Germany pulled clear of the pack by claiming the first medal of the four on offer yesterday in men's biathlon 4x7.5km relay at Cesana San Sicario.
Rico Gross and Michael Rosch gave them a solid start before Sven Fischer surprisingly misfired on the range only for anchor man Michael Greis to bring the team home in 1 hour, 21.51 minutes with Russia 43.6 seconds behind and France in third.
It was the second gold here for both Fischer (10km) and Greis (20km).
With six days and 31 titles out of 84 still to go, Germany now have eight golds ahead of Austria, the US and Russia, who are all tied on seven.
For the Austrians the day was overshadowed by another police raid on their nordic team.
The late-night search, at a house at Pragelato in the Italian Alps, came just two days after police, acting on a tip-off, had raided another base used by their biathlon and nordic skiers.
Despite the controversy, Austria are one of the most successful teams at the Games.
They have athletes taking part in the nordic combined and the biathlon 4x7.5m relay yesterday.
Three more titles were at stake yesterday with the Americans looking strong in the men's 1500m speed skating, and Germany favorites in the women's bobsleigh and men's biathlon relay and challenging in the nordic combined large hill/sprint.
There was to be eager anticipation also in the Austrian camp with the International Olympic Committee set to announce its results of the doping tests in carried out after a raid on the living quarters of Austrian skiers.
The overnight swoop on Saturday stunned the Austrians and set off a bizarre series of events that resulted in banned coach Walter Mayer fleeing Italy and eventually ending up in jail after crashing into a police check-point back home.
If there are any positive results it will cast a thick pall over the performances of all of Austria's biathletes and nordic skiers.
The men's 1,500m speed skating will highlight a tense rivalry between US speedskaters Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick.
Davis won 1,000m gold on Saturday, a week after Hedrick took 5,000m gold. Hedrick set the world record of 1:42.78 in November, breaking Davis' mark, and owns the world record at 10,000m, Friday's concluding event.
"The good thing is I hold the world record in the last two races. All the pressure is on me," Hedrick said. "I'll be the favorite. I like that."
In the women's bobsleigh, German favorites Sandra Kiriasis and Anja Schneiderheinze are ahead but they narrowly avoided a spectacular wipeout in Monday's firet two runs.
Kiriasis lost control of the speeding sled and almost missed an exit before making it home for a total time of 1:54.93 sec, 0.08 sec ahead of team-mates Susi Lisa Erdmann and Nicole Herschmann.
The Germans have already won the men's equivalent through Andre Lange and Kevin Kuske.
At Pragelato, Finland's Hannu Manninen has a last chance to grab some Olympic glory in the sprint after failing to reproduce the dominating form he regularly shows in the World Cup.
In figure skating all the pressure will be on Russian favorite Irina Slutskaya.
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