Canada prepares for Olympic battle

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The official two-year countdown to the 2012 Olympics starts Tuesday and Canada expects to finish in the top 12 in the medal chase at the multibillion-dollar extravaganza in London. It has world champions and past medalists to send into battle.

"We've seen what a focused plan delivered at the Vancouver Games. Placing in the top 12, among more than 200 nations, is an ambitious goal, but striving to be your best is a core element of the Olympic movement," said Jean Dupré, the Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer as the COC launched its two-year Road to London quest. At Beijing in 2008, Canada tied for 14th place with Spain in the total medal count at 18 medals. To be 12th, Canada would have had to match the 24 of Cuba.

He said the COC vision is to leverage partnerships with national sport federations, the Own the Podium funding agency, the federal government and others to make Canada a "leading nation in both summer and winter sport."

Some of the athletes already have taken the bit to run with it. Hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, winner of a bronze medal at Beijing, said her road to London starts this weekend with a head-to-head battle for the Canadian title against past world champion Perdita Felicien.

"In 2008 I was the dark horse. Now I'm on the map," Lopes-Schliep said. "The times have been coming down and I've stayed very healthy. I was going after the podium in Beijing and I'm going after that podium again. I won't let the pressure get to me, through I know there's someone out there training hard who wants my spot. If I get a personal best I'm going to do a little dance on the track."

Diver Alexandre Despatie, who got a silver medal in three metre, said though he's now an old-timer in his sport at 25, he's been working on his flexibility to keep pace with the young Chinese divers who have become a factor in his sport.

"It doesn't matter what age you are, everybody's hungry for that special performance," Despatie said. "I'm certainly more fragile. … But I have to add a turn, a flip. You have to be in shape to do a certain dive. I have to work a little harder to do a dive that a little kid has to. But London was always in the back of my head. From the moment I left the pool in Beijing.

"Going to London is something special. I didn't want to give it up. Heading to the training camp will be just as exciting as the first one when I was 15. It's going to be my fourth Olympics and the only medal missing for me is an Olympic gold."

Britain is poised to rise beyond the fourth place it achieved in Beijing. A report in The Times of London suggests Britain should surpass its 2008 performance, putting it in a league with China, the United States and Russia. A British sport analysis says Britain has 120 competitors capable of winning medals (including teams and crews). Peter Keen, the director of performance at UK Sport, said: "There's more bullets in the gun now, definitely."

In Beijing, Britain won 19 golds. To finish third there, they would have had to overtake Russia, which won 23.

London will celebrate the milestone Tuesday by launching a search for Games-time volunteers and opening some of the venues to let athletes test out the facilities.

"The World Cup is out of the way. This is where the world is coming," organizing committee president Sebastian Coe told The Associated Press.

The overall construction and infrastructure budget is almost $15-billion after cuts of $43.2-million in the building budget of the Olympic Delivery Authority. Coe's separate, privately financed organizing committee budget is $3.2-billion.

The largest cost is going toward the development of the 2.5-square-kilometre Olympic Park in the Stratford area of old industrial east London.

Coe said the Olympics have already had an economic spinoff by providing $10.4-billion of construction work and employment for 10,500 workers.