Home comforts are golden for Team Canada (News Feature)

By Barry Whelan Feb 7, 2010, 23:08 GMT

Vancouver - Sara Renner has just experienced the rare pleasure of a race on home snow.

She enjoyed a home-cooked breakfast, spent a morning at home with her husband and three-year-old daughter Aria, and then went out and skied to a cross-country World Cup podium place. To her own surprise.

Coming third in a 1.4-kilometre classic sprint at her home town of Canmore, Alberta was the perfect send off for the winter Games in Vancouver - and a foretaste for Canadian athletes when competition begins on Saturday.

'I have to say the home advantage is incredible,' she said.

Renner is one of 206 Canadian athletes attempting to get on the podium at the Vancouver Olympics as the host nation hopes to benefit at last from performing in front of their own.

Canada hosted the Montreal 1976 summer Games and the 1988 Calgary winter Games, but there was not a single gold for a Canadian at either event.

That is almost certain to change in Vancouver.

Some 117 million Canadian dollars (110 million US dollars) have been put into the five-year Own the Podium programme for training and equipment to get Canada to the top of the medals table.

'It's the best-funded, most well prepared team Canada has ever sent to an Olympics,' the Canadian Press wrote.

Like Renner, Canadian competitors will have all the advantages of playing at home. Greater access to training at the venues, familiar time zones, the home comforts of a familiar environment and the close support of family, friends and fans are worth as much if not more than the tangible benefits of the increased funding.

'As a Canadian athlete competing at home, I see it as a huge opportunity,' says Renner.

'We toil away in Europe in obscurity for most of our careers, and to bring our sport to Canada, and to perform at our best in Canada, that's the ultimate goal, and I really feel a lot of support from people around me, and I think it's best to focus on that.'

It's the small things that often count - like, says Renner, knowing 'where I can get my coffee and I can get bacon.'

It's a view shared by many including speed skater Denny Morrison. The Calgary resident even bought a condominium in Richmond close to the Olympic Oval just so he good feel at home during the Games.

'I wanted to get used to my surroundings, know the city, know where the grocery store is, know where the gas station is.'

There have been complaints from other nations that the Canadians are exploiting home advantage to the full, restricting their rivals' venue training to the permissible minimum.

But that's dismissed by Canada ski jump team leader Brent Morrice, who, while extolling the advantages of three years' of training on the Whistler hills, has little truck for the complaints.

'We, like all the sports, have limited the access on purpose. We gave the access to the other countries as much as we needed to and no more than that,' he told reporters.

'It is a little advantage for us. They will be familiar, they will be familiar with the starters, they will be familiar with the volunteers that are out there, so everything is going to be just like normal for Team Canada at Whistler Olympic Park. I don't think it is an unfair advantage. It happens in every Olympics.'

A home Olympics does though increase the pressure. And nowhere will expectations weigh heavier than in ice-hockey where failure by the men's team - which did not reach the medals round in Turin in 2006 - cannot be contemplated in a country addicted to the sport.

'If Team Canada loses the final - or fails to reach it - the disappointment could colour the nation's take on the entire Games. The only colour that counts is gold,' says Sports Illustrated.

Canada will be hoping to come out of the blocks on the first day with gold medal contenders in the men's alpine skiing downhill as well as the speed skating and short track events.

However Roger Jackson, chief executive of Own the Podium, has urged the Canadian media and public not to panic if gold medals don't flow immediately.

'As you watch the medal totals day by day, what you need to know is we don't expect Canada to challenge for the lead until the last few days of the Games,' he said.

Halfway through the Games, Canada could be far behind the likes of Germany and the United States in the medals table, he warns.

By the end though the Canadians should have gone past the 2006 Turin tally of seven gold, 10 silver and seven bronze.

Anything less will be regarded as a failure.