December 02, 2015 (Oestersund, Sweden) – Twenty-year-old Sean Doherty from Center Conway, N.H. delivered an impressive 17th place season-opening performance out of 104 starters in the men’s 20km at the BMW IBU World Cup #1 in Oestersund, Sweden.

Sean Doherty (USA) © Nordic Focus

Doherty hit 18 of 20 targets missing one target at each of the prone stages but went clean in standing to move up 30 spots over last year’s performance. “The race today was phenomenal,” said Doherty. “I had great skis and felt strong on the course. I had no idea how well it was going until the last lap. I am super excited to start the season off on such a good note, and I am looking forward to the sprint.”

Legendary Norwegian, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, 41, took the gold medal with clean shooting as the silver medal went to Germany’s Simon Schempp at 27.1 seconds back with one penalty. Russia’s Alexey Volkov claimed the bronze medal with clean shooting @38.2 seconds behind the winner.

The USA’s Lowell Bailey finished 24th following a solid start which saw him challenging for a podium, but two penalties in the final standing shooting stage knocked him back. Canada’s Nathan Smith placed 27th with four missed targets.

Tim Burke was 37th with three penalties, Christian Gow (Can) was 62nd also with three penalties, Macx Davies (Can) was 85th suffering five penalties, Scott Gow (Can) was 86 with seven missed targets and Leif Nordgren was 104th with an off day suffering 13th penalties.

Full results are available here.