Torrential rain, oppressive heat and grizzly bears, Patrick Singleton has had to deal with all these and more in his quest to qualify for his fourth Winter Games.

The Bermudian skeleton driver begins his campaign to reach next February's Games in Vancouver next week when the European season starts, and has been training solidly since July with his British team-mates.

It seems to have paid off, with Singleton believing he is faster and stronger than ever and well prepared to battle nearly 100 other competitors for one of just seven spots available for the Games.

He got a chance to put that training into practice in Canada earlier this month when he travelled to Whistler to have a look at the track that will be used in next year's Games. And while Singleton didn't think his time there told the whole story, it certainly gave him the confidence to believe he could succeed.

"I've changed a few little things with my start, just the technique really," he said, "but within the course of three days I took an enormous amount of time off my push, smashed my personal bests, and really started to become competitive.

"I'm now world competitive with this push, it's not on top of the standings but my start isn't as slow as it used to be, and I was blown away by it, it's a bit like taking a second off the 100 metres."

Singleton took two-tenths of a second off his push time in one day, which may not seem like a lot, but translates into 1.2 seconds by the end of a run.

"All in all I think it's going well, it's still too hard to say how I stack up against the rest of the world, and the racers I am going to go up against," said Singleton. "It's going to be extremely competitive, but I have all the tools I need to be competitive, and it's just up to me to execute them.

"If I don't qualify it's going to be my fault, unless something goes wrong that I can't control. It's going to be tough, but I'm going to enjoy this fight."

His journey hasn't been without its trials, however, and included a mad dash across Europe, and practising in a rain storm that he said was like 'driving blind down Front Street with the scooter slipping around all over the place".

Originally scheduled to begin training in Italy, the intense heat rendered the track, and ice machine, inoperable and so they were forced to switch to Germany, where the rain took over.

"There was almost a typhoon in Germany, and you couldn't see 15 feet in front of you, it was like being on a water slide," said Singleton of his first training run.

From there Singleton and the GB team, with whom he trains, raced across Europe to catch a flight to the US, and Lake Placid for more training. And then it was on to Whistler where the work stepped up a notch. Hours of video analysis, stength and conditioning work, and ice baths were all part of the build-up to the qualifying season which begins next week.

"People weren't too stressed out, people will start to get stressed in the next few weeks when the serious business of qualifying begins," he said.

"But don't get me wrong, we did very hard work, we trained on weights and sprints every day, and it was an all-day process, and was very physically tiring."

It wasn't all work though, there was fun as well.

"It was a very relaxing environment,. Whistler isn't a qualification course, it will be the reward if we qualify. There were bears and wolves roaming at the side of the track, and the bears would peer over the side of the track while the riders were going down.

"People were stopping taking pictures, and there is a fantastic bit of video of a Canadian athlete rounding the finish curve and there is a bear leaning into the track looking at the guy as he goes past."

For a while it seemed that Singleton's bid to even get the chance to qualify would collapse through a lack of financial support, but companies such as TBI and XL rallied round, as well as several private donors.

"I've had a lot of support from people in Bermuda, they've really got behind me in the last few months, and I wouldn't be able to do it without them," he said.