Fourcade, now a five-time Olympic champion, remains in pole position to secure a seventh straight World Cup crown but faces stiff competition from Norway's Johannes Thingnes Bø.

The 29-year-old currently has a total of 834 points and will hope to extend his advantage when the event begins in the Finnish municipality with the men's 10 kilometres sprint race tomorrow.

It is effectively a straight shoot-out between Fourcade and Bø, the Olympic individual champion who has 780 points, for the overall title as Slovenia's Jakov Fak is some way adrift in third with just three events left of the campaign.

The battle for the women's World Cup is a much closer affair as five biathletes are in contention.

Kaisa Mäkäräinen, the current leader, will be hoping to return to form on home snow following her disappointing performance at Pyeongchang 2018, where she surprisingly failed to win a medal.

Mäkäräinen occupies top spot on 592 points but is being hounded by a chasing pack of Anastasia Kuzmina of Slovakia, Italy's Dorothea Wierer, Germany's Laura Dahlmeier, who won two golds in Pyeongchang, and Belarusian Darya Domracheva.

Kuzmina is the Finnish athlete's closest challenger with 577 points, followed by Wierer on 525 and Dahlmeier on 490 points.

The first women's race is scheduled to take place on Friday (March 9) with the 7.5km sprint.