VANCOUVER, B.C. - The pressure is on the home team to shine at the Vancouver Winter Games.
Canadians have set their most ambitious Olympic target ever. Win more medals, no matter what colour, than any other country.
"We'll be winning medals pretty well every day. Some days four and some days one," says Roger Jackson, head of Own the Podium, Canada's blueprint for that medal haul. "We'll be somewhere in the 25 to 30 range unless we really have a hot team and then we'll be just above 30."
OTP is the $117-million, five-year plan established in 2004 to prepare the host team to win medals in 2010. The federal government, ie taxpayers, funded $66 million of it and the Vancouver organizing committee covered most of the remainder.
Canada finished third overall four years ago in Turin with 24 medals. Medal hopefuls and a few dark horses will have to come through for Canada to improve on that number starting Saturday, which is the first day medals will be awarded.
While Canadian officials say they are counting medals, not their colour, Canadians will be looking for gold.
In 1988, the host country won just five medals - two silver and three bronze - in Calgary. Canadians won six medals - five silver and six bronze - at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.
Canada has the dubious distinction as the only country to have hosted an Olympics and not won a gold medal at its own Games. It will be important to the Canadian team for one of their own to win a gold medal early and drop that label.
Jackson points out that Canada has won 20 gold medals over the last three Winter Olympics.
"The fact we'll probably be stronger this time around is probably some assurance we'll get it," he says. "I hope we put to bed that issue."
But Canada is more concerned about quantity, not the quality, of the medals it wins.
"We have never gone down the road of talking about gold medals," Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer Chris Rudge has said. "We're not there yet. I think we're still in an evolutionary stage."
"It would be premature to only measure ourselves on gold medals right now, particularly going into a Games at home where we haven't won one gold medal before."
Germany, a perennial front-runner for the most Olympic gold medals, spent about 214 million euros (C$339 million) on its athletes in 2008. The country has 20 multi-sport Olympic centres across the country catering to its elite athletes.
By comparison, the Canadian government spent a record $166 million on both summer and winter sport in 2008-09, with seven sport centres from coast to coast.
Twenty-nine medals, which was Germany's overall total in finishing No. 1 in 2006, should comfortably put Canada on top in the overall medal race.
But Germany, the U.S. and 2014 host Russia will each take a large slice of the medal pie. Russia is offering huge bonuses to medallists, including US$135,000 for gold. Austria, Norway and China will also take medals off the table from Canada.
Jackson cautions that half of Canada's medals will come in the final days of the Games when there are events in which the host team has strong medal potential. The U.S. and Germany may be far ahead of Canada by Day 8 before Canadians begin gaining ground.
"We don't expect Canada to challenge for the lead until the last few days of the Games," he says. "Have patience. We will be right in the mix at the top of the heap."
Even if the Canadian team manages to finish first, they may have to share that ranking with another country.
"I could easily see the situation where it's 27 and 27 and then 26 (medals), or something like that because the United States and Germany will both be strong," says Jackson.
Moguls skier Jennifer Heil of Spruce Grove, Alta., kick-started the medal haul in Turin in 2006 with gold on the first day of competition and she is up again Feb. 13 at Cypress Mountain.
Many look to her as the Canadian team's bellwether athlete of the Games, although alpine skier Manuel Osborne-Paradis of Invermere, B.C., in the men's downhill, or short-track speedskater Charles Hamelin of Ste-Julie., Que., in the 1,500 metres, could steal her thunder earlier in the day.
Momentum counts.
"It's critical to get everybody to believe and get everybody excited about getting their own medal," Jackson says. "As they see the avalanche of medals starting, they clearly think 'I should be in there. Why not?"'
Illness and injury are the biggest threats to Canada's aspirations. Already, the alpine ski team's prospects have diminished with elite skiers John Kucera and Kelly VanderBeek falling prey to injury.
Jackson gets nervous hearing about the bobsled and skeleton teams battling colds and flu. Ski cross racer Julia Murray of Whistler, B.C., suffered a partially torn ligament in her knee Jan. 22 and is on the clock to rehabilitate before her Feb. 23 event.
"Those are the things you worry at Games time," Jackson says. "We have very little depth in most sports, so we can't afford to lose the better ones or the ones who are just edging into some podium performances."
Bob McCormack, the team's chief medical officer, estimates over 80 per cent of 206 athletes on the Canadian team has been vaccinated for swine flu. That's remarkable given there were no dedicated clinics for Olympic athletes and many were travelling abroad when the vaccine became widely available in Canada.
"It was a challenge," McCormack says.
The speedskaters are the backbone of Canada's Olympic team. Thirteen to 15 medals are needed there.
Cindy Klassen, winner of five medals in 2006, isn't expected to repeat that feat because she took all of last season off following knee surgery. Christine Nesbitt of London, Ont., and Ottawa's Kristina Groves can fill that void as potential multi-medallists.
Nesbitt is the reigning world champion in the 1,000 metres and won bronze at the world championships in the 1,500. Groves will race in four individual events and is a medal threat in all. The women's pursuit team is the favourite for the gold medal.
"People can say what they want about what they think I'm going to accomplish, or what the team is going to accomplish," says Groves. "I kind of chuckle a little bit because I find predictions are kind of meaningless. People start counting medals before the gun even goes off, and that's really not a good place to be."
After speedskating, snowboarding, moguls freestyle skiing, the new sport of ski cross and bobsled and skeleton are Canada's swing events. Seven medals there can get Canada over the 20-medal mark.
"Those sports have to perform," Jackson says.
Canadians must win the four medals available to them in curling and hockey. Anything less than gold in those disciplines, however, will be a disappointment, particularly in men's hockey.
If the beleaguered alpine ski team, figure skaters, other freestyle ski disciplines and the cross-country skiers could produce two or three medals, that would be gravy.
Home-field advantage will count in some sports such as skeleton, bobsleigh and luge. Whistler has the fastest, and most dangerous track in the world, and Canadians have spent more time on it than any other country.
Men's hockey? Not as much home-field advantage. Most athletes play in the NHL on the smaller North American ice surfaces. They've been in GM Place, renamed Canada Hockey Place for the Games, when they've faced the Canucks.
Canada's athletes won't face long plane rides or jet lag to get to Vancouver. They'll be surrounded by friends and family and will have more supporters than they've had at any Olympics.
"As a hockey player, we all want to play in front of a stadium full of fans and if they're on your side, it's that much better," says women's hockey forward Jayna Hefford of Kingston, Ont. "When you're in the tunnel about to go out and you see the flags and you're hearing people get excited, you can't not let that energy creep in."
There is also the possibility of athletes wilting under the unprecedented attention on them. Another veteran of the 1988 Games says there's no getting around that pressure.
"They've had four years to really acknowledge it and deal with it," says figure skater Brian Orser, a silver medallist in Calgary. "Try to avoid saying it's just another competition, because it's not. And anybody who's been to the Olympics before, it's not just another Olympics, because I went to Sarajevo in '84 and then came to Calgary in '88, and it was two different events."
"For me, it was a different pressure, but I knew it and I was dealing with it. You're reminded every single day about the Olympics when you're here - the commercials, now the torch relay."
The recurring theme at the end of almost every previous Olympics has been how poorly Canada's athletes have been supported financially in comparison to the world's powers.
But for the last five years, they've had medical support teams devoted to keeping them sound in mind and body. They've been to training camps and competitions around the world. They've had laboratories across the country building better equipment for them.
"Anything you didn't receive, or think you didn't receive is just grasping at straws," says skeleton racer Jon Montgomery from Russell, Man. "Anything we need to be successful was provided and then some."
Adds Jackson: "It's up to the athletes to write their final examinations. There are no excuses."
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-With files from Lori Ewing and Shi Davidi