The World Cup Biathlon comes to Fort Kent in about a week.

But first, the world’s top athletes in the skiing and shooting sport have to get through a Cup stop in Lake Placid, N.Y., which runs Feb. 27-29.

Lake Placid is the seventh stop on the World Cup circuit. The most recent stop was Jan. 21-25 in Antholz, Italy, after which the biathletes moved on to the world championships in Oberhof, Germany, Feb. 6-15.

The top biathletes in the world are expected at the Fort Kent Cup stop. The placement of the event on the schedule means the leaders likely won’t miss the competition in the St. John Valley.

“It’s the second-to-last stop, and there are three races, so if the people on top want to stay there, they’ll have to come,” said Max Saenger, the deputy chief of competition for Fort Kent and the chief operating officer of the Limestone-based Maine Winter Sports Center.

The U.S. Junior National Championships are also being held in Aroostook County. Presque Isle and Fort Kent will host that competition starting Saturday.

Saenger said about 150 athletes are expected for the Fort Kent World Cup competition, which starts March 3 with the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint races and continues through Saturday.

The top two biathletes in the world, the married Raphael and Liv Grete Poiree, are expected to both be in Fort Kent.

Raphael Poiree, who competes for France, leads Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen by 17 points in the individual men’s standings.

The French are currently ranked fourth in the World Cup standings.

The men’s team from Norway leads the most recent standings, although by a slim 50-point margin. Germany is in second place and the Russian Federation team follows in third. France and Belarus round out the top five.

Norway’s Liv Grete Poiree has a bigger lead on her closest rival, Sandrine Bailly of France. Poiree, who has reportedly been sick but will compete in both the Lake Placid and Fort Kent Cup stops, leads Bailly by 102 points.

The team from the Russian Federation has a 35-point lead on Germany in the team competition, with Norway, Belarus, and France, respectively, filling out the top five.

The Poirees, both 29, have to be considered two of the hotter athletes coming into Lake Placid and Fort Kent. They combined to win nine medals in 10 events at the world championships. Liv Grete Poiree won four gold medals, the first woman biathlete to do so. Raphael Poiree won three golds, a silver, and a bronze.

The U.S. men, who are in 19th place, are led by Alaska’s Jay Hakkinen and Vermont resident Jeremy Teela, who are 51st and 65th, respectively, in the individual standings.

The U.S. women are ranked 18th. Rachel Steer, another Alaska resident, is the top U.S. woman at 50th place overall.

Athletes begin arriving in Fort Kent Monday, with training days Monday and Tuesday. The competition starts Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. with the women’s sprint. The men’s 10-kilometer sprint will be Thursday, also starting at 9:30. The men’s and women’s pursuit events will be held Friday. The competition will end Saturday with the men’s and women’s mass start, followed by a closing ceremony.

Final preparations are under way in Fort Kent, where Saenger said organizers are expecting around 4,000 spectators each day. The big project last weekend was the installation of electronic biathlon targets, which were brought from the Soldier Hollow Olympic biathlon venue in Utah and were the same targets used in the 2002 Winter Games.

The U.S. junior nationals start Saturday with a relay event. The mass start competition will be Sunday and the sprint will be Monday.

Kelsy Bouchard of Fort Kent is a member of the girls team and helped the U.S. youth team to a seventh-place relay finish at the Youth and Junior World Championships in January. Russell Currier of Caribou, a member of the boys team, was the anchor leg in a relay that finished 10th.

Currier was 21st in the youth men’s pursuit and Bouchard was 34th in the youth women’s pursuit. Both had the top U.S. finishes in their respective events.