Mellisa Hollingsworth has full confidence that the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre will be in immaculate, consistent shape for the women's skeleton event at the Vancouver 2010 Games.

As the first competitor down the track on race day, she'll know before anybody else whether that's in fact true.

"My battle with Whistler is going to be to overcome myself, not to worry about the other sliders or other times," Hollingsworth said by telephone Friday, after winning the overall women's World Cup points title with a third place finish in Igls, Austria.

"So in a lot of ways, it will almost be the pure Olympic experience at the start."

Hollingsworth clinched her second Crystal Globe as the overall women's World Cup winner, in the process securing the No. 1 starting position when the women's skeleton competition begins on Thursday. Feb. 18, with the first of two days of racing.

Hollingsworth, who was scheduled to return to Canada Sunday ahead of next week's official naming of the Canadian skeleton and bobsleigh teams, also won the Crystal Globe in 2006 en route to finishing third at the Torino Games. That year, she had a head to head battle with Maya Pedersen of Switzerland. This year, Great Britain's Shelley Rudman - the silver medalist at Torino - was her foil, finishing in second place just 42 points behind Hollingsworth's total of 1,646 points.

Kerstin Szymkowiak of Germany was third in the World Cup standings with 1,574 points and finished second in Friday's race, .36 of a second behind teammate Anja Huber, whose two-race time was 1:49.57. Hollingsworth's time was 1:49.96.

"This is a huge accomplishment for me, because all of the tracks have been very diverse," said the native of Eckville, Alta., who also won the Crystal Globe in 2006 before finishing third in the Turin Olympics. "It's been really gratifying to be able to use all my skills on all these different tracks.

"Four years ago, I was peaking for the Olympics both in my pushing and driving," she said. "Now, my style of driving has changed. A lot of that has to do with equipment and adapting to new equipment, but I also know that I'm more relaxed and calm on my sled."

Hollingsworth exchanged goodbyes with Rudman after the race as the two were packing up. "She said: ‘I'll see you in Whistler,' and then reminded me she'll be standing behind me in the start gate," said Hollingsworth, laughing.

Hollingsworth reached the podium in seven of eight World Cup races, winning in Lake Placid and Koenigssee. She said the Lake Placid race gave her an inkling that she might be on the way to a special kind of season.

"I knew after our selection races, just by the way I was feeling physically and the way I was driving, that the potential existed," Hollingsworth said. "But to win in Lake Placid after having a not so great week of training? That just showed me it was all about being in the right mental frame of the mind on the day of the race. Training is training."

Canada's two other Olympic skeleton racers, Amy Gough of Abbotsford, B.C., and Michelle Kelly of Fort St. John, B.C., remained behind in North America this weekend after successfully qualifying a third sled for Canada last weekend in Calgary at an Americas Cup race. Carla Pavan of Lethbridge was the only Canadian other than Hollingsworth to compete at Igls, finishing 14th.

In the women's bobsleigh race, Kaillie Humphries of Calgary and Heather Moyse of Summerside, P.E.I., finished third en route to a second-place finish in the overall rankings. The pair's point total of 1,563 left them behind Sandra Kiriasis of Germany, who won her eighth consecutive title with 1,608 points. Helen Upperton of Calgary finished fifth with 1,442 while Amanda Stepenko of Edmonton finished 10th with 1,120 points.

Upperton, who had Shelley-Ann Brown of Pickering, Ont., as her brakeman and who was battling the flu, and Stepenko, who had Amanda Moreley of Surrey, B.C., in her sled, finished tied for seventh in Friday's race.