Germophobe skiers don't want stray microbes to jeopardize their slim chances at podium.

Mike Beamish

Canadian funnyman and game show host Howie Mandel is a well-documented germophobe, and members of the Canadian Olympic cross-country ski team have caught a case of his obsessiveness.

Like Mandel, Alex Harvey and his teammates are gripped by an inability to shake hands because they suspect some of us haven't been washing up with antibacterial soap like we should.

This is not Team Canada on skinny skis. It's Team Obsessive-Compulsive.

"No, no, that's okay, you don't have to," Harvey said, when a reporter's paw was extended to him following an interview Saturday.

The Canadians, who begin their two-week, 12-event Olympic competition today in the Callaghan Valley, are terrified of picking up colds or flu bugs from door knobs, public washrooms or routine human interaction.

Canadian Olympic silver medallist Sara Renner, making her fourth trip to the Winter Games, is in self-imposed quarantine from her husband, former alpine skier Thomas Grandi, and her three-year-old, Aria.

"I'm a mother and sickness is brought in through my daughter," she explained. "So I have to be careful. We have a lot of hand sanitizer everywhere."

"We're packing Purell," says two-time Olympian Devon Kershaw. "We've got that in a holster, ready to go. We don't shake competitors' hands any more. You just say, 'Good race, see you later.' It's kind of sad, in a way, but it's a necessary step to stay healthy. If you get sick ... well, as an endurance athlete, your Games are pretty much over."

If you think the Canadians are being a trifle standoffish, you'd be correct. They are being pampered by cooks preparing individual, made-to-order meals. Their living quarters, in the gated Black Tusk subdivision, are spacious, comfortable and quiet. Most important, they're strategically removed from the buggy, noisy, frat house atmosphere of the athletes' village.

"You've got to take a lot of precautions, even if you look like a snob," Kershaw admits.

It would seem to be overly cautious behaviour from a team whose medal chances fall somewhere between the ski jumpers (zero) and the Canadian men's ice hockey team (where a silver might as well be tin).

Pierre Harvey, a three-time World Cup winner in the 1980s, would love to see his son, the 21-year-old rising star of the Canadian team, win a medal in his first Olympic competition. But as an analyst for RDS, the Quebec cable sports network, Harvey senior concedes Alex faces as much difficulty as any Canadian in reaching the podium.

"It's going to be hard for Canada to win a medal this time," he confesses.

That might seem like backsliding, since Canada won its first Olympic medal in crosscountry skiing (Beckie Scott) at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Four years later, in Turin, Canada picked up two more. However, male skiers from Canada, considered the deeper half of the Olympic team for the first time in Whistler, have never won a medal, and a breakthrough may not be in the cards.

"I'm being realistic, too, like my dad," Alex Harvey says. "I don't want to lower the pressure, or bring it higher. We believe in ourselves. I consider myself as a medal contender, a threat, along with 30 other guys. But I'm not a medal favourite. That's the difference. Still, if you don't believe you can win a medal, you won't."

Harvey is one of six names on the Canadian team who have won medals on the World Cup circuit. Before Turin, there were only three. At Salt Lake in '02, there was only one.

Renner, who won an Olympic silver with Scott in team sprint four years ago, says the evolution of the national ski team program over the past 10 years has been nothing short of revolutionary.

"I remember, after Nagano [in 1998], we had all our funding cut because there was no hope for us," she says. "With Beckie Scott leading the way, and pulling our program behind her, our mentality changed. We believed we could do it. We started to believe if we put in the work, great things can happen."

Maybe they will again, but maybe not. Reaping a single medal from cross county toward the goal of Owning the Podium would be considered a bonus this time.

"Canadians have all these expectations," Renner admits. "But I think a 100-per-cent effort in a ski race is all we can give to the Canadian people. It used to be that we dreamed of being in the top 30. Now, we dream of medals. We're a small team, but we have a chance to surprise."

And God forbid that any stray microbe should stand in the way.

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