Jenn Heil climbs two flights of stairs to the bedroom she occupied before the Olympic gold, when a bike was her only mode of transportation and Celine Dion didn't know her name.
"You couldn't see this much carpet when I was here," she says, pausing at the door of the corner room where she billeted over two Olympic games.
Downstairs, caterers are uncorking wine and arranging steak and mashed potatoes into martini glasses. It's a cold evening in late November, and soon Heil will mingle with businessmen who have come to this brick home in one of Montreal's wealthiest neighbourhoods to celebrate a unique program that harnesses corporate donations to meet the training needs of Olympians. Heil was the program's original beneficiary, and with her medal and four World Cup titles, is a symbol its success.
But for now the 26-year-old, her petite frame hugged by black tights and chain belt, sneaks into a quiet room to talk about what looms ahead.
As defending Olympic champion in an event scheduled on the first full day of competition at the Vancouver Olympics, few athletes face as much pressure to perform as Heil.
A second gold could make her a pioneer twice over: first freestyle skier ever to win back-to-back gold medals, first Canadian to win gold on home turf.
She is also one of the most visible Canadian athletes of the Games; Dion, Quebec's most famous export, has wished her luck in a personal videotaped message. Heil's face is displayed in Birks jewellery store windows across the country, featuring Olympic-inspired earrings, bracelets and necklaces she designed.
She is asked if this daunts her.
"After 2006, somebody told me that I should retire because I have attained success and I could always go down from here," she says. "I just refuse to look at it that way. I'm doing everything I can to prepare."
Preparation - to an extraordinary degree - is a mantra for Heil. It really began here, at the home of Montreal businessman J.D. Miller, nine years ago. The pair were introduced by Heil's coach, Dominick Gauthier, when Heil was a 17-year-old national freestyle ski team member from Spruce Grove, Alta. Her shins were badly injured from overuse, and Miller and his wife offered her a room while she worked with top-level trainers in Montreal for a couple of weeks.
Soon Heil was on her bike, dodging trucks and clutching a hand-drawn map marked with the address of physiotherapists and trainers.
Miller jokes: "She never left."
Heil was 18 when she finished fourth at her first Olympic Games in 2002, just 0.01 points out of third place. She had to sit out the following season because her body was still plagued with injuries. She embarked on a physical regimen within the Canadian freestyle team system, padded by donations Miller drummed up. She hired sports psychologists, physiotherapists, and a trainer with the Montreal Canadiens.
"There was definitely a lot of, well, maybe relief, that I was in a place that I was getting the attention and the help that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else," Heil says.
Heil won Olympic gold on Day 2 of the 2006 Winter Games, finishing 0.85 points ahead of Norway's defending Olympic champion, Kari Traa. Heil's gold was Canada's first of the 2006 Winter Games and the first ever Olympic moguls medal won by a Canadian woman.
"I had done everything I could possibly have done to be prepared," she says. "That feeling was as satisfying as the medal."
But she knew she could ski better.
"The key for Jenn, and that's what makes her who she is, is she's so attentive to detail. She's never going to be just content," says Gauthier, her coach and boyfriend, with whom she lives in Montreal.
After winning gold, Heil skipped the 2007-08 season to finish her second year of commerce at McGill, and to rest her ailing knees.
Magnetic resonance imaging tests revealed no problems, but doctors discovered that Heil's right hip alignment was causing the pain. So Heil spent months rehabilitating her hip and reprogramming her lower-body mechanics with exercises.
Gauthier says she relearned how to walk.
"The whole summer, I was looking at her, like, 'Oh my god. She must be so bored.' I'm telling you no one else would do that for a month. She did it for six or seven."
Heil admits with a laugh that she can be "overfocused sometimes," but her parents say their daughter has always been determined. Her mother, Heather Heil, recalls seeing her 10-year-old daughter pushing herself so hard at a cross-country race that she threw up.
She has focused equally hard on how she wanted to channel.
"Being a gold medalist, you're put into a different situation. You have the opportunity to be heard, and to share. And it's pretty cool to have that opportunity. But you want to use it right."
She champions causes ranging from helping girls in developing countries through the Because I AM A Girl campaign, to an annual coaching camp she runs for young female freestyle skiers.
She, along with Miller and Gauthier, founded a group called b2ten to provide Olympians with tools, such as airfare and equipment, that they need to perform at their best. Heil is one of 24 athletes, including speed skater Christine Nesbitt and figure skater Patrick Chan, who have received a portion of the program's $3-million contributions.
If the three years following the 2002 Olympics were about physical preparation, the last three years have really been about steeling her mental preparation, Heil says.
Through the Canadian freestyle team's sports psychologist, Penny Werthner, Heil and other freestyle skiers have used a futuristic training program called bio/neurofeedback, where athletes hooked up to electrodes can see how mental stimulation - like stress - and their body's physical responses are linked.
Heil says it's helped her narrow down exactly how she wants to feel at the top of the Olympic course at Cypress Mountain.
She sees a sea of Canadian flags, her parents in the crowd. She hears their roar.
She imagines what her run will feel like: "Pushing it. Going for it. Exciting. Fun."
She visualizes having the flexibility to deal with whatever unexpected event comes her way. What she doesn't think about, she says, is the one thing that no amount of preparation can control.
"It's sport," she says. "You know, we don't know the outcome. If we knew the outcome, no one would care about sport. So I've committed to this. And I'm doing everything I can. And at the end of the day I'll know I've done my best effort. I don't think I can ask more of myself than that."
With a report from Alex Blair
SNAPSHOT JENN HEIL
2006 Olympic gold medalist in Turin, the first medal won by a Canadian female in moguls.
2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 World Cup overall women's moguls champion, the first Canadian woman to do so.
10-time Canadian champion.
World Cup team member since 1999.
The dream of becoming an Olympian was first sparked at an Edmonton newsstand while browsing the Sports Illustrated Barcelona Olympics issue. Heil was enthralled by the power and determination in the athletes' eyes. She decided that day she would be an Olympian.
Source: CTV Olympic research database