Ski like a champion

Head north of the border this winter and you'll be able to ski and snowboard like an Olympian.

OK, perhaps not as well. But you will be able to ski where Winter Olympics competitors will be skiing and snowboarding in just 16 months. The downhill courses for the 2010 games have been tweaked and set, the Nordic trails surveyed and cut and the superpipe designed and built.

And they'll all be open to the public as soon as winter sets in and the snow flies.

Cross-country, biathlon, Nordic combined and ski jumping competitions will be held at British Columbia's Whistler Olympic Park in 2010. Alpine ski events -- downhill, giant slalom, slalom, super-G and super combined -- will be contested on the slopes of Whistler Mountain in Whistler proper. Freestyle ski and snowboarding events will be waged at Cypress Mountain ski area in North Vancouver.

At all three venues, the public will find something to ski and snowboard on this winter.

Nordic skiing

Whistler Olympic Park offers a network of about 55 kilometers of trails (5K lit for night-skiing), including the 15K Olympic Trails, which will be marked. They all will open on Nov. 22, which also marks the debut of the park's new day lodge, offering food service, ticket sales (a day pass costs $20 for adults) and rentals.

"The Olympic skiers will be here this season for the five World Cup events," says John Aalberg, who raced for the U.S. team in 1992 and '94 and is now the director of Nordic sports for the Vancouver Olympics Committee "We're going to let spectators, if they want, ski out on the trails and watch the races in their skis from trail-side. So you actually will get a more close-up view. We will not allow that during the actual games."

The park's network of trails is adjacent and linked to another 50-kilometer network of trails operated by the wilderness lodge Callaghan Country (www.callaghancountry.com), so there actually are about 100 kilometers of trails available to the public in the valley.

Alpine skiing

To the north, for many years skiers and snowboarders have been ripping the runs that will host the 2010 alpine events. Generally, the men's downhill and super-G courses follow the long-popular Dave Murray Downhill run, while the bulk of the women's downhill and super-G tracks follow the run known as Franz's.

These both start near the top of the Garbanzo Chair on Whistler Mountain, with the finishes of both on what is known as the Timing Flats just up the hill from Whistler Creekside, the big ski resort's original base area.

"It's a great ski experience on the west side of Whistler Mountain," said Doug Forseth, Whistler Blackcomb vice president of operations. "You can start at the top of the downhill or GS locations and enjoy what our Olympians from around the world will be competing on. Both the men's and women's courses are thrilling."

The bobsled, luge and skeleton events in 2010 will be contested at the Whistler Sliding Center on Blackcomb Mountain, above the mountain's upper parking areas. But you will not be able to climb into a skeleton and rattle your bones down the course. The public will not be allowed to use these tracks.

"The sliding center is open already and people can do walking tours," said Amber Sessions, a Whistler Blackcomb spokeswoman. "Athletes will be training there sporadically this winter, so people on occasion will be able to watch."

Snowboarding and freestyle

The public will have access to many of the Olympic venues at Cypress Mountain, all on one of the area's two peaks, Black Mountain. Freestyle skiing events include aerials, moguls and, for the first time ever in 2010, ski-cross. Snowboard events include halfpipe, parallel giant slalom and snowboard-cross. The public will not be able to use the jumps for aerials and may have limited access to the moguls course, both of which will be used frequently this winter for training.

The men's and women's parallel giant slalom events will be on the appropriately named blue run PGS, which begins near the top of the Eagle Express quad and crosses under the lift. The cross courses are on the Upper and Lower Fork runs, also accessed by the Eagle Express, but keeping to skier's left of the lift all the way down.

"We're definitely getting excited," Koeman said. "The World Cups are going to be great to see. We've only had two before."

Finally, the ticket allocation process for 2010 has begun, with requests being accepted though Nov. 7, and will be determined by a lottery.