Bobsleigh pilot Pierre Lueders figures on getting at least 200 runs at the Whistler Sliding Centre compared with maybe 40 for his competitors. He knows Europeans will grumble about not having equal access to the 2010 Olympics site, and he doesn't care. For once, he has home advantage. Canadians, he says, "won't be bullied" by other countries.

At the Richmond Oval speed-skating venue, a technician can change ice temperature by a couple of degrees overnight, transforming the surface from grippy for sprinters to slick for distance skaters. The Canadian speed-skating team, already one of the world's strongest, will feel the difference more intimately than any foreign team because of ice time, hundreds of hours of precious ice time.

A World Cup competition at Cypress Mountain starting today will give internationals a first taste of the snowboard facilities. Come April, though, Canadian riders will train exclusively on the Olympic half-pipe for two weeks, while athletes of other countries clamour in vein for time to test the pitch and 22-foot walls.

"They're trying to get in, but they can't," says Tom Hutchinson, head coach of freestyle events for the Canadian Snowboard Federation.

Canadians are exploiting the opportunity to play on home turf at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, and they're not apologizing for it either. It's highly un-Canadian, true, but so is the goal set forth by the Canadian Olympic Committee - to finish at the top of the medals table.

Canadians were far more generous with access prior to the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, and failed to win a gold medal. No Canadian climbed to the top of the podium in the 1976 Montreal Summer Games either.

So, preferential treatment this time around? Absolutely. Should we feel guilty? Absolutely not, says Roger Jackson, chief executive officer of Own the Podium, a program established to give Canadian Olympians the resources they need for a successful 2010 Games.

For those athletes, the Vancouver Games represent a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Steve Omischl of North Bay is a world champion and two-time Olympian, but his name is known in Canada to few outside his sport. Here comes his chance at ultimate achievement, fame and maybe fortune.

One year from now, he says, his career will be distilled "all into a seven-second window," the time it takes to leap off a ramp into the West Vancouver sky, twist, turn and land at Cypress Mountain.

Home-field advantage can take many forms, from the roar of judge-swaying home crowds, to the reassuring familiarity of the surroundings, to an understanding of how the puck will bounce off the boards at Canada Hockey Place.

"To be able to have Canadians at the bottom of the hill, to have the Canadian flags and the cheering, is going to be a huge strength for our Canadian athletes," says Jennifer Heil of Spruce Grove, Alta., the 2006 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle ski moguls.

All venues are ready, and Canadians will enjoy comparatively unlimited access for training on the chutes, runs and rinks while international competitors gain access only at the pleasure of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC).

Corporate and government sponsors have provided athletes with unprecedented financial backing, with funds poured into sport science, technology, coaching, travel and simulated Olympic competitions. Says Crazy Canuck ski icon Ken Read, an architect of the $110-million Own the Podium program: "They've bought them everything except excuses."

During the past five years, sport scientists have worked to gain the few 100ths of seconds that can make the difference between a gold medal and fourth place. For instance, a GPS system has tracked the optimal route down the Whistler ski hills. Wind-cutting fabrics and tuck positions of skiers have been analyzed in wind tunnels. Aerodynamic uniforms have been developed for snowboarders and ski-cross athletes. The makeup of the snowflakes and crystals on the cross-country trails in the Callahan Valley has been studied so the perfect waxes can be chosen on competition day.

Skiers including Erik Guay and Manuel Osborne-Paradis are taking a break from the World Cup circuit next week to train on the Whistler courses exactly one year in front of the Games. Foreigners won't have the same access.

"Good," said skier Britt Janyk, who grew up racing at Whistler. "It's not just the athletes, but a whole team of technicians at Whistler, testing different [ski] bases and waxes to see what will be fast there. It's huge to have access to the hill and to that data, for our own personal technicians to use that information."

Mr. Osborne-Paradis likewise grew up with Whistler's Dave Murray Downhill as his playground.

"I couldn't know the course better," he said, during the world alpine championships in Val d'Isère, France. "My only worry there is turning off my cellphone and getting rid of the distractions."

At Cypress in April, Canadian boarders will compete head-to-head, and be put through Games-time headaches of transportation foul-ups and the security gauntlet. Snowboard officials are even trying to get VANOC to bring in the same set of volunteers who will be working the Games.

"It just makes them feel more at home," Mr. Hutchinson said.

Former racer Jeff Ihaksi of Whistler created the rolling ski-cross run and the boardercross course at Cypress. "It looks awesome, big jumps, and it's more technical, compared with some of our last World Cups," said Canadian ski-cross racer Julia Murray. Stanley Hayer, the X Games gold medalist last month, said the course is steep, aggressive and "visually scary" for weaker competitors.

On the moguls course, Canadians procured home-field advantage behind the scenes. The original design of the moguls pitch was "too soft and too flat," says Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. It had been "dumbed down," which would have represented a disadvantage to skilled Canadian mogul skiers. Negotiations with VANOC led to a steeper, tougher course more suited to home talent.

Back in Whistler, the sliding chutes for bobsleigh, skeleton and luge are considered by some drivers the most thrilling in the world, with 16 serpentine turns and speeds reaching 150 kilometres per hour. Melissa Hollingsworth, of Eckville, Alta., estimates she will have 300 runs at the skeleton chute before the Games. Michelle Kelly, of Fort St. John, B.C., who has had more than 120 runs on the track already, had a spectacular crash on Turn 16 last month., slipping off her sled and sliding on her stomach.

"It goes to show the [importance of] home-track advantage. I've already had 100 runs, and yet I can still be knocked off my sled," she said. "At the end of the day, if I get beat by someone who has had 40 or 50 runs, versus my 200, then they deserve to win."

The idiosyncrasies of the Whistler track might make local familiarity a greater factor than it has been elsewhere. Of the 107 Olympic medals awarded in two-man, four-man and two-women bobsleigh since 1924 in Chamonix, only 10 have been won by the host country. Four have been gold. Since luge began in Innsbruck in 1964, 10 medals have gone to the host country. Three of those were gold. Skeleton has been a competition in just four Olympics, with the United States' three medals (two gold) at Salt Lake City in 2002 the only medals for a host in that discipline.

"I never believed in home-track or home-ice advantage, especially the way everybody studies everyone else," Mr. Lueders said. "One thing you notice during the training runs here is that there are a lot of video cameras and I assume a lot of the video will be of us [Canadians] because we've driven the track the most often and other countries probably feel they can pick up something."

Mr. Lueders paused, then chuckled.

"The other day in practice, there were a lot of cameras on me in one turn and I was lousy. I hope they're all studying that ... I hope they're all watching my line on that turn."

Not all sports feature a definite advantage for Canadians. In figure skating, the new judging system is so complex it is more difficult to contrive finishes than in the past.

"When I first started judging internationally, back in the seventies, it was fairly strong, provided that the skaters skated well," says former judge Jane Garden. "Nobody was handing out real gifts. But if there were three or four that were similar, the hometown favourite just might get a little extra help. But with the new system, it's pretty hard to do that.

"The home advantage really is that the skater draws adrenalin from it. ... You teach the skaters to draw all that energy from the crowd inside. And let them radiate with it. And it's something you have to be in the building to feel. You don't get it when you watch television. The cameras can't pick up that charisma."

With reports from Stephen Brunt, Jeff Blair, Dawn Walton, Allan Maki, Hayley Mick, Beverley Smith, David Ebner and Matthew Sekeres