VANCOUVER 2010: ONE YEAR OUT
Canada's top gold diggers
RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR
The Star's Olympic specialist Randy Starkman takes a look at athletes and teams with gold medal potential for the Vancouver Olympics.Figure skater Chan just one of many bright lights on the strongest team ever for Winter Games
Feb 12, 2009 04:30 AM
Randy Starkman
SPORTS REPORTER
VANCOUVER–Patrick Chan surveys the city skyline from atop Cypress Mountain, a look of awe in his eyes and excitement in his voice.
One year from now at the 2010 Winter Olympics, the precocious 18-year-old Toronto figure skater could own this place.
"I just picture if I did win what would happen to me," said Chan. "How I would be. I'd probably be in tears. ... It'll be such a relief. It's always on my mind.
"Always. Always. Always."
He's not alone. Canada will field its strongest team ever for the Feb. 12-28 Games, a squad that won't quite have the firepower to beat Germany to win the overall medal race, as has been the objective, but should top the record 24 medals won in Turin in 2006.
That albatross of being the only host Olympic nation to never win a gold medal – and to do it twice – should be ripped from this nation's neck.
There's just too much depth in Canada right now for there not to be success. Last week's impressive medal blitz in pre-Olympic tests here and events abroad amply demonstrated that fact.
Consider that two of Canada's top speed skaters, Turin hero Cindy Klassen and sprint star Jeremy Wotherspoon, have been sidelined with serious injuries, and that the powerhouse long-track team has not missed a beat.
Canada went 1-2-3 in a men's World Cup moguls event recently. Defending Olympic moguls champion Jenn Heil and the skier she regards like a little brother, Alex Bilodeau, kept the gold in the family at last weekend's Olympic test event here.
Strength in the ranks was also seen last week at Whistler. After the women struggled in the first World Cup skeleton race, Jon Montgomery and Jeff Pain flexed their muscles to finish 1-3 in the men's skeleton race that same day.
The Canadian men's and women's hockey teams will surely challenge for gold, as will the nation's curlers.
Where Canada couldn't capitalize on home advantage at two previous Olympics, the table has been set this time by an ambitious five-year, $120 million program called Own the Podium, funded by government and Olympic sponsors. It has a separate "top-secret" component, which has been developing things like pilot Pierre Lueders' four-man bobsled, the Whistler Bomber.
No one wants to bomb at these Games – there's too much at stake. The athletes certainly are feeling the pressure and the difference in the end, as is usually the case, will be who is the strongest mentally.
When Chan competed recently at the Canadian championships, his veteran coach Don Laws surveyed the nervous skaters waiting to go out on the ice for warm-up and likened it to waiting on death row.
"It feels like we're all waiting to get executed," said Chan. "We're all nervous. We're all getting sweaty palms and everyone's just quiet. And it was hilarious and everyone laughed because it's so true. We all think about it, we do treat it as if it's life or death."
The switch gets pulled today on the one-year countdown for the greatest winter sporting show on earth. The Canadian team has been working hard to try to cover all the bases, including the all-important psychological one. There have been conferences where the likes of Brian Orser, Mark Tewksbury, U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen and Jamie Salé and David Pelletier have told the current athletes about their own experiences.
Some athletes have hooked up with mentors. Clara Hughes and some other speed skaters are working with Norwegian legend Johann Olav Koss, while Heil, who is looking to repeat as champion on the opening day of competition here next February, is working with this country's only individual repeat Olympic champion, speed skater Catriona Le May Doan.
There are the young lions, like Chan and a group of 21-year-olds such as Bilodeau and snowboarders Jeff Batchelor of Oakville and Matt Morison of Burketon, Ont., near Oshawa, winners of silver and bronze medals at the recent world championships.
Then there's the veteran presence of Lueders and Hughes, skeleton racer Pain, a silver medallist in Turin, and freestyle aerialist Steve Omischl, looking for Olympic gold to match his world and World Cup overall titles.
They're all testing their limits, looking for every edge en route to next year's Games. Omischl, for his part, is working on a jump he hopes none of his competitors can match.
"I can always go back, but if I don't push now I'll never go forward," he said. "That's what it comes down to." Or as Chan puts it: "A goal's not to be achieved really easily."
Heil certainly knows that, having spent all of last season rebuilding her body for the challenge ahead.
"I love to be in the start gate," she said. "I love to compete. It comes back to the same thing: I love having that moment where I have to try and lay it all out. Again those little details. You want to do everything you can to make sure they fall in place. You don't know if they will. That's the excitement of it."