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Tuesday will mark two years to the official opening of the Vancouver Olympics, but Canadians are close enough to see the top of the mountain from here.

Canadian athletes are closing in on the goal of becoming the top medal-winning country among winter sports nations, accumulating World Cup and world championship medals this season at a faster pace than front-running Germany. Already, Canada's moved past traditional winter sport powers such as Norway, Austria, Russia and the United States.

There will be no more kicking snow in the face of hapless Canadians, who have twice been hosts of the Olympic Games yet never won gold on home soil. This time, the future promises to be gilt, not guilt.

Two years out, there are plenty of candidates to be the first gold medal hero at home. There are four events on Feb. 13, 2008, in which a Canadian Olympian can make history. Women's and men's moguls will go in the morning at Cypress Mountain, and that could be a chance for Pierre-Alexandre Rousseau or Jennifer Heil to pluck gold out of the Olympic sky, as Heil did on the first morning in Turin two winters ago.

If not there, gold could await at the men's downhill, with Erik Guay, John Kucera and Manuel Osborne-Paradis waiting to scorch down Whistler Mountain. If there's still no gold in Canadian hands, Charles Hamelin will be churning his blades around the Pacific Coliseum ice in the short-track 1,500 metres, chasing the prize. That will be followed by the men's long-track 5,000 metres at the Richmond Oval, where Arne Dankers, Justin Warsylewicz or Steve Elm will perform.

Canada needs the big start to kick off what the Canadian Olympic Committee wants to be a tour de force. The COC predicted two years ago, after Canada got a national record of 24 medals at the Turin Games, that 35 medals would be required to ensure first place at Vancouver — and that's the goal. The top of the mountain.

Canada will need a dominant performance. The average medal count of the last seven countries to top the standings has been just less than 27. The top medal hauls have numbered 29, by the Soviet Union in 1988 at Calgary and by Germany in 1998 and 2006.

Dominance is not a rarity for Canadian athletes. It's a land of ice and snow, and, chauvinistically, Canadians expect to win in hockey, curling and freestyle skiing.

In those events, Canada has a wealth of both athletes and coaches. But in the others, to bring up the performance level, there has been a plot to give Canadians home advantage.

It's the $110-million Own the Podium scheme, funded half by the federal government and half by funds raised by the Vancouver organizing committee.

"We don't aim for silver or bronze in hockey and curling," said Ken Read, the chief executive officer of Alpine Canada Alpin and head of the association of Canada's winter sport federations. "Why did we expect less than a win in other sports?"

Own the Podium has helped pay for more coaches and support staff, for innovative sport science from the mysterious Project Top Secret and for recruitment of athletes from summer sports whose well-developed skills might be transferable to Winter Games. Canadians have benefited from dedicated training sites such as Farnham Glacier in British Columbia for the alpine skiers and preferential practice time on the same runs that will be used for the Olympics. World Cup events have been organized at places such as Canmore and Lake Louise, Alta., Panorama, B.C., and Sainte-Adèle, Que., so Canadians get a feel for performing with the expectations of a home audience.

According to statistics compiled by Own the Podium, Canada had 133 World Cup medals as of yesterday afternoon — 38 of them gold — and has been accumulating podium appearances at a faster pace than the Germans. Canada's biggest gold producer, as it has been for 70 years, is speed skating, with 40 medals to date on long track and 29 on short track.

In a revealing midseason comparison, Germany had captured 93 World Cup medals, an increase of only one from the same period in 2006-07. Canada had 88 medals in the same span, an increase of 24 from 2006-07. The United States lagged in third place, followed by Austria and Norway.

"Canadian athletes are now beginning to achieve more consistent podium success at World Cup events," Roger Jackson, the CEO of Own the Podium said in a statement.

The program gives Canadian athletes the coaching, technology and competitive opportunities that make a difference between being competitive at the world level and being a champion, Read said.

In Project Top Secret, sport scientists at 15 Canadian institutes are looking for an advantage in technology. "We don't go over the line where it would be considered cheating," Jackson said.

Within limits, however, Canadian athletes will be given the best advantage possible. The type and texture of the snow at Callaghan Valley, the site of the nordic ski events, has been studied intensely, and Canadian skiers and wax technicians will have more opportunities than most to find the right combinations. Sliders will get more runs with their Canadian bobsleds, luges and skeleton sleds than racers from other countries. There may be new technology invented for speed-skating blades, or, failing that, there may be a specific formulation for the ice surface or a temperature that works better for Canadian skaters than others.

World-class coaching has been a key for the continued rise in the Canadian team's performances. Read says 15 on-hill coaches have been added in the past two to three seasons to make Canadian skiers more consistent, including Heinzpeter Platter and former Crazy Canuck Rob Boyd for the women's speed team. Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton now lists 11 coaches, covering off areas of recovery and regeneration, starts and strength and driving.

Luge racer Meaghan Simister is not yet among the Canadian medal winners at the world luge championships in Oberhof, Germany, but she made breakthroughs into the top 10 in a sport where it's hard to crack the European ranks.

The luge squad recruited Wolfgang Staudinger from Germany to train the Canadians through 2010.

"He has pushed us all this year to levels we haven't done before," said Simister, who added the team did nine runs down the world championship track in a 90-minute session when the previous norm was four runs in training.

"Getting time on the tracks is so important. We're doing so much training and we're all exhausted, but the results definitely make it all worthwhile."