Elusive gold all but certain for Team Canada (Feature)

By David Hein Jan 27, 2010, 5:04 GMT

Munich - Jennifer Heil could help Canadian Olympic fans and officials breathe an enormous sigh of relief if she wins the women's moguls on the opening day of the Vancouver Olympics.

Heil would not only defend her crown from 2006, but she would get Canada's first gold medal at a home Olympics after the nation failed to win at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games and 1988 Calgary Winter Games.

Such a success on February 13 would take the pressure off the rest of Canada's Olympians to finally grab home gold and could even set the host nation on its way to becoming the top medal-winning country at Vancouver 2010.

Canada finished third in total medals at Turin 2006 with 24, behind Germany with 29 and the United States with 25, respectively. Canada's seven gold medals from Italy were a fifth best tie with Sweden, behind Germany (11), the United States and Austria (9 each) and Russia (8).

And despite never having won a gold medal at home, Canadian Olympic officials believe their years of hard work in preparation for 2010 could push them to the top of the medals count.

The key to Canada's chances of excelling are the sports quartet of freestyle skiing, snowboarding, figure skating and alpine skiing. Canadian athletes combined for a dozen medals at the 2009 world championships in those sports, including parallel giant slalom gold by Jasey-Jay Anderson.

Those four sports brought home just three medals from Turin - Heil in freestyle skiing, Dominique Maltais in snowboard and Jeffrey Buttle in figure skating with no alpine hardware.

'If those four sports carry over their success and the rest of the sports hold their own, we could do it,' Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer Chris Rudge told the Toronto daily The Globe and Mail.

All told, Canadian athletes collected six golds, seven silvers and 13 bronzes in the 2009 world championships of the Olympic events.

While Canada fans are expecting men's and women's gold from their ice hockey and curling teams, Rudge and company can even dream about the possibility of sweeping the podium in men's moguls, the women's 1,000 and 1,500 metres in speed skating, men's and women's skeleton and the new sport of ski cross.

Two of the biggest reasons for the optimism are the Olympic Excellence Series and the Own The Podium plan.

The Excellence Series, which began three years ago, is a set of programs that put athletes in touch with the successes and history and heroes of their sports.

Own The Podium is a five-year, 120-million-dollar plan which helps get Canadian athletes more familiar with the Olympic home conditions to create an advantage while helping them deal with the adrenaline rush of performing in front of family and friends.

The rush supplied by Heil on Day One could prove to be the spark to history.