Is Canada Ready for 2010?

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That left Canada's women to pick up the slack, and did they ever. Although outnumbered by men (110 to 88), the women won twice as many medals (16 to 8). That continues the trend since 2002, when women won nine and the men seven, plus a shared gold in pairs' figure skating. Do the Olympics mean something more to female athletes? "I think the women have something to prove," says Karin Lofstrom, executive director of the Canadian Association of Women and Sport. "This is their time to shine, to be in the limelight, and it's to their credit they're able to produce when they have one shot to do it."

Canada's gold-medal female hockey players don't dream of NHL careers. Its cross-country skiers have few chances to parlay their athletic prowess into pro-sports careers. "They're not going to get that, and they know it. It isn't about the money," says Lofstrom. "They're in sport because it's their passion and, corny as it sounds, for the love of sport." Lofstrom expects the female fortitude to continue in 2010. "The depth of the women's field is great. To have experience at these Games going into the next Games on home soil is an advantage."

Home cooking. That could be the recipe for Canada's Alpine skiers, who haven't medaled since 1994 but who came agonizingly close in Torino. Olympic rookies Erik Guay, Kelly VanderBeek and Francois Bourque settled for fourth; Genevieve Simard was fifth. Guay, 24, skied on a gimpy knee and missed bronze by 0.1 sec. in the super-G. "Fourth place is the worst," he said. "I'll be thinking about that one-tenth of a second for the next four years." So will VanderBeek, 23, who missed the Ladies' super-G podium by 0.03 sec.

"There's frustration at being so tantalizingly close mixed with satisfaction they're exceeding expectations," says former Crazy Canuck Ken Read, a two-time Olympian and head of Alpine Canada. "If those fourths had been a medal, people would have been doing backflips. We wanted this team to gain the experience to position themselves for 2010. They're doing that."

Read brought a tangible reminder home to Calgary from Torino: a rock from the finish areas of each of the four ski venues. "I stole them from the Italian Alps because we're turning over every rock trying to find the key to victory. You have to be relentlessly committed to excellence. In 2002 our best result was seventh. We've made a lot of progress. Now for the next four years, we've got to redouble that effort."

With the Torino Olympics in the books, the post-Games' analysis by Own the Podium 2010 chief Roger Jackson gets under way. Each sport will be evaluated to determine what was done right and what needs to change to meet the target of 35 medals and the No. 1 ranking at Vancouver-Whistler. "Own the Podium is a business plan. It's only been in place for 14 months," says Read. "All the winter sports have said, 'Let's roll up the sleeves and get going.'" Thirty-five total medals, from 24? Fourth to first in skiing in four years? It's doable, but now there's the added pressure of having put it on the table at home, like those rocks from Italy that sit on Read's desk. Just call them the weight of expectations.