Sweden beat the Czech Republic 4-0, to win the gold medal at the ice hockey world championship in Riga on Sunday.

The win has seen Sweden being crowned the world and Olympic champions for 2006.

The final of the world championship began at 8:15 p.m. between last year's world champions the Czech Republic and Sweden, the gold medallists of the Winter Olympics.

Sweden started as the better team right from the start, and it always looked like an uphill battle for the Czech team to win tonight.

Sweden had a goal disallowed in the ninth minute of the first period, which later replays showed the referee had made a mistake by disallowing it.

After a tight first period, Sweden finally scored their first goal of the match when Jesper Mattsson deflected the puck high off a Czech defender and the Czech goal tender had no chance of stopping the Swedes from celebrating.

With 15:13 gone in the first period, just 37 seconds after scoring their first goal, Swedish offensive player Fredrik Emvall helped in a long shot from Jesper Mattsson to register Sweden's second score of the match.

Sweden again put another score on the board in the fourth minute of the second period. Niklas Kronwall broke behind the Czech defense and received an assist from Ronnie Sundin, and all Kronwall had to do was beat the Czech goal keep one on one.

In the 37th minute of the game, Jorgen Jonssons scored an easy goal for Sweden, when they had five on the ice to the Czech's three, after two of their defensemen were penalized for slashing and holding offences.

The final period was played at a slower rate, with Sweden still controlling much of the last term of the game. No goals were scored in the final period, but Sweden did enough to exert enough pressure on the Czech Republic to keep them from registering a goal.

Sweden last won the world ice hockey championship in 1998, eight years ago.

Earlier Finland won the bronze medal when they defeated Canada 5-0.

Editor: Donald