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Is Canada's dubious distinction about to become history?

It's one Olympic record we can't wait to shed.

By now you've probably heard the embarrassing statistic: Canada, the only country to host multiple Olympic Games without winning a single gold medal at home.

The Montreal Summer Games of 1976? Non.

Calgary's Winter Games of '88? A horse-bleep total of just five medals, including two silver.

That's 244 chances, in all kinds of events, in all types of conditions, and nary a win.

If this is the mother of all sports curses, it's time for somebody to cut the umbilical cord.

As we speed our way toward Vancouver 2010, a nation that has discovered its inner conqueror is ready to do whatever it takes to climb to the top of the podium, even if it means elbowing aside a few people along the way.

Sound un-Canadian?

That's the idea.

Those brash Yanks have nothing on us anymore. Haven't you heard -- we want to Own the Podium in Vancouver, and we spent more than $100 million to do it.

So the feeling right from the boardroom down to the bobsled run is not if Canada breaks the jinx, but when.

"When you look at the goal of this team, to be the No. 1 in the world, we've got to get on a roll," Nick Bass, the high-performance adviser for the Own the Podium program, said.

Getting on a roll means striking gold early. That usually sets off frenzy, and you don't have to go back to the Klondike Rush 113 years ago to see it.

It happened at the Turin Games of '06, too.

So who's our top candidate? Learn from history and, if we're lucky, we'll be doomed to repeat it.

Three years ago, Alberta's Jennifer Heil pulled on her goggles, hit the moguls run and struck it rich -- on Day 1.

That sparked the Canucks to their best-ever Winter Games: 24 medals overall, including seven gold.

Guess who's going mining on the first full day of competition in Vancouver?

None other than the queen of the bumps, making Heil our choice to hit the first gold vein on Canadian soil.

"Best bet for the first gold medal," Bass said. "She is one of our stars."

Bass isn't alone in his prediction.

In Calgary, the president of that city's Canadian Sports Centre, which services our high performance athletes, echoed Bass's sentiments.

"I'm going to say it's Jenn Heil, women's moguls," Dale Henwood said. "Just based on history, she's a pretty good shot."

A poll of Sun Media journalists and commentators from TSN/CTV produced more votes for Heil than anyone.

So we have an early favourite in this thoroughbred race. Post time, 7:30 p.m., Pacific time, Feb. 13.

Perhaps the best news, though: Canada has plenty of horses around Heil, in men's moguls, on the speed skating oval, the short track course, even on the slopes.

No Beijing

This should be no Beijing, where day after day after medal-less day went by, and all our athletes produced was sweat.

"It won't be like the Summer Olympics," Bass said. "We didn't have a lot of depth in the first week."

By comparison, Team Canada is swimming in world-class talent going into the early events of 2010.

Alexandre Bilodeau, Heil's training partner and male equivalent, with gold medals in his last five World Cup events, not to mention at the world championship in March, comes to mind.

At the tender age of 22, Bilodeau will hit the moguls on Day 2, the same day Canada's powerful long track speed skaters bust out of the gate, led by Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes and, we presume, a recovered Cindy Klassen, queen of the Turin Games.

At this point, Groves is the better bet in the women's 3,000, while Klassen's stock -- she took the year off to have orthoscopic surgery on both knees -- will rise or fall on the World Cup circuit next season.

Still at the oval, we won't have to wait long to see if Jeremy Wotherspoon can bury his Olympic demons, and bounce back from a badly broken arm -- the men's 500 metres is set for Day 3.

Neither our experts nor our media panel expect the drought to go beyond three days.

The revival of the men's alpine team has even created more than a passing interest in the men's downhill, the first medal event of Day 1.

"We have multiple medal threats in that event," Bass said. "And with a little bit of home field advantage where they've been training on that course, I would not be surprised if we had an athlete on the podium."

Bass is referring to John Kucera, Manuel Osborne-Paradis and Erik Guay, long shots for gold, perhaps, but in the unpredictable world of alpine, who knows? Kucera shocked everyone by winning gold at the world championship -- despite being ranked 19th.

Call them crazy, but the Canucks see that kind of magic happening more than once in Vancouver.

 

SOURCE: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Olympics/2010Vancouver/News/2009/05/17/9485616-sun.html