Sweden's Martin Ponsiluoma celebrated the opening victory, Hiidensalo opened cheerfully in 11th place

Sweden's Martin Ponsiluoma missed one shot from the first upright, but cleared the rest of the shots cleanly and took the victory in the opening race of the World Cup season with a normal distance.

Switzerland's Niklas Hartweg took his first career podium at the World Cup and was second, 37.2 seconds behind.

Germany's David Zobel, who also reached third, took the best cup ranking of his career. Hartweg and Zobel cleared all four shooting positions without misses.

Ponsiluoma won the 2021 World Cup gold in the sprint race, but otherwise he had not won a World Cup event before.

"Of course the shooting was the decisive thing for the win today. I felt like I was focused all day. In the skiing, the start was under control and I was able to progress like that for five laps. That was the key (to the win). It felt like a hard interval training. There was no real fatigue at any point , so my day was fantastic", the Swede described his performance.

On Saturday, he will realize one of his dreams, when he gets to start wearing a yellow vest.

"Surely everyone dreams of being able to start in a yellow vest, so I'm really happy and excited about it".

Hiidensalo succeeded, Seppälä's competition went wrong for better positions in the first vertical position

The best of the Finnish men in the normal competition was Olli Hiidensalo, who was 11th with one missed shot.

Hiidensalo set off moderately, because in terms of skiing, the course of the day was a mystery to him. In the end, he continued his all-around successful performance until the finish line and survived the competition with two missed shots and was 11th. He missed the winner by 2.24,1.

"The race as a whole went quite well. I started off calmly and tried to take advantage of the pee. In the third shooting I fell behind a bit and had to ski to catch the pee. I managed to go really well until the finish line. The shooting was a bit slow, but the hits made the difference today," Hiidensalo said with a smile .

Tero Seppälä was 35th with four missed shots. Three came from the second shooting.

"It wasn't quite my day today. It fell on the first vertical position. It was also quite challenging on the track", Seppälä reflected and thought that he would also do more ski tests before the next competitions.

Jaakko Ranta was 46th, Tuomas Harjula 72nd and Heikki Laitinen 78th.