Jan Hudec crouches in a deep tuck, his elbows bent tight to his sides and his thighs straining as the wind whistles by his ears at a 100 kilometres per hour.

But Hudec isn't racing down a snow-covered mountain. He's indoors and his skis are bolted tightly to a steel floor.

The alpine skier from Calgary, one of Canada's top hopes for a medal on the Whistler slopes at the 2010 Olympics in February, is fine-tuning his technique and measuring aerodynamics in the General Motors wind tunnel.

Alpine Canada officials hope the state-of-the-art facility will help propel their skiers to the podium.

In a sport where the difference between victory and defeat is the blink of an eye, Canadian skiers are leaving nothing to chance.

"It's really cool the way they have it set up, you can see exactly what your drag is, what position is slow, what position is fast without waiting for the data, and you can really utilize that to change your technique while you're skiing,'' says Hudec, a former world championship silver medallist.

This is the eighth consecutive season Canadian skiers have travelled to Warren, Mich., on the outskirts of Detroit to do testing at GM's Aerodynamics Laboratory.

The cavernous facility resembles a freeway tunnel and is normally used to test aerodynamics of GM's new cars and trucks. A six-blade fan, built of laminated spruce, stretches 13 metres in diameter and powers winds of up to 222 km/h.

Hudec, dressed in his bright yellow racing suit and helmet, watches his own image on a screen the size of a pool table affixed to the floor in front of him.

The monitor also displays live data on Hudec's drag - the aerodynamic force that reduces forward motion - giving the skier immediate feedback as he alters his body position.

A staff of engineers sits in a control booth that resembles an air traffic control room, watching a wall of television monitors and painstakingly inputting measurements.

A ribbon of smoke blows past Hudec, showing the path the wind travels over the skier's rounded body.

"It's instantaneous biofeedback,'' says aerodynamics consultant Len Brownlie.

"The athletes really like that. They can ski all year on the slope but they won't know that they're that much faster, that much slower, it's kind of a guess. But here they can dial it in exactly, and know that that position's faster than this one, if I put my elbows in front of my knees, it's better.

"Think of trying to walk on a windy day with a piece of plywood in front of you, it's extremely difficult, and the faster you go the higher the drag force. These guys are going down the hill anywhere from 100 to 150 kilometres an hour and it's a huge difference.''

Brownlie was hired as a consultant by the Canadian Olympic Committee as part of Own the Podium's "Top Secret'' initiative to help Canadian athletes win the most medals at the Vancouver Games. He works with most of the Canadian winter teams.

"These guys are winning and losing races by tenths of a second and we can definitely provide that sort of benefit by testing and optimizing their equipment,'' Brownlie says.

"We can absolutely change the order of a podium finish or whether someone makes the podium or not.''

The Vancouver native, who is also part of Nike's team of aerodynamics gurus, used the same wind tunnel technology to help American cycling star Lance Armstrong to reduce his drag en route to an unprecedented sixth Tour de France victory in 2004.

Armstrong was able to modify his positioning on the bike using the biofeedback, plus Nike used wind-tunnel technology to help design its Swift Spin suit worn by Armstrong, finalized after meticulous testing on more than 33 prototype suits and experiments with 60 different fabrics.

Space-age racing suits can play a huge role in performance, with lab-coated technicians pushing the limits. The high-tech polyurethene swimsuits caused an uproar at the world aquatic championships in Rome in July, where 43 world records fell. The suits have since been banned by FINA, swimming's world governing body.

Brownlie said the wind-tunnel benefits are as much psychological as they are physiological. When Armstrong pedalled to the start of the Tour de France, he knew he was as prepared as he could be.

When the Canadian skiers crouch in the start gate at Whistler in February, they'll know they have left no technological stone unturned, from their suits to their equipment to the precise positioning of their body as they rocket down the slopes.

"It's knowing they're as well-prepared as any other country,'' Brownlie said.

Dozens of research projects have been conducted as part of the ``Top Secret'' component of the $117-million Own the Podium program. And the projects are indeed being kept secret.

While journalists were permitted to watch an hour of the ski team testing at the GM facility one morning this fall, the skiers didn't pull out their new Olympic ski suits they're still fine-tuning for Vancouver until later in the day when the reporters were long gone. The atmosphere was out of a James Bond movie.

But Brownlie worries he's already revealed too much.

"We want to be very careful about what we're showing, so unfortunately what you're getting here is kind of the diet version of what's going on,'' Brownlie says.

Tyler Nella of Toronto is trying out the wind tunnel for the first time. The 23-year-old spreads his arms wide, reading the instant increase in drag. He crouches back into his tuck, and then drops his rear end lower, noticing the dip in drag.

"It's sort of like if you were to stick your head out of the car going 100, its' pretty loud but it feels pretty cool,'' Nella says.

"It's definitely educational, you can feel when the wind is pushing you back and if you get into a lower position, you can feel the drag isn't as prominent.''

Hudec, meanwhile, is recovering from his sixth serious knee injury. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee last February. He suffered the injury less than three weeks after he returned from his fifth ACL tear in his right knee.

He's hoping to compete at the World Cup opener at Lake Louise, Alta., Nov. 28-29, where he captured gold two years ago. Lake Louise hosts the women a week later.