Bjøntegaard recorded a perfect shooting score in the sprint discipline to propel him to another gold at the Roland Arena.

He recorded the third-fastest skiing time to cross the finish line in 24min 57.3sec.

Compatriot Vebjoern Soerum took second in 25:08.8, picking up two shooting penalties on the second round.

Third-placed Philipp Nawrath of Germany earned one penalty on both shooting rounds, but his time of 25:40.3 was enough to hold off Latvia's Andrejs Rastorgujevs in fourth by one second.

"On a scale from 1 to 10, it's 11," Bjøntegaard said afterwards.

"I'm super happy."

The women's 7.5km sprint was won by the 2015 champion Merkushyna.

Shooting clean was crucial to her victory too, and she recorded a time of 23min 14.5sec.

"Tracks here are hard and I was excited to test them before the IBU World Championships, which will be here in two years," Merkushyna said. 

"It is great to win this Gold medal, to listen to Ukraine's anthem and hopefully bring some happiness to my country.

That edged her to gold ahead of Sweden's Tilda Johansson, who clocked 23:15.0 after one shooting penalty on the first round.

Vanessa Hinz of Germany shot clean to place third in 23:16.7, with Sweden's Selina Grotian finishing 7.9 off the pace in fourth.

The IBU Open European Championships is set to continue tomorrow with the women's 10km and men's 12.5km pursuit races.