Patrick Singleton knows he has already moved one step closer to a place in next year's Winter Olympics -- even before he races today in the World Cup luge event in Salt Lake City.

The minimum requirement for Singleton to qualify for the Games is to take part in three top-tier events, those being either World Cup or World Championships.

And this week Singleton qualified with some style for the Salt Lake race -- on the same, lightning-fast track where the 2002 Olympics will be held -- to grab his second World Cup starting place in succession after he finished 38th in Nagano, Japan last week.

That means he needs just one more qualification from the two more meets this season, plus the whole of next season's World Cup programme of at least seven races, to represent Bermuda in the Winter Olympics for the second time.

Singleton goes into today's race bubbling with confidence after he was the fastest qualifier to emerge from his group of 40 -- although wary of a brand new track so fast it presented lugers with a whole new challenge.

"It could go either way,'' Singleton told The Royal Gazette from Utah. "I could go extremely fast or I could have a crash. But I feel that on race day I tend to have a mental advantage over most of the guys. That may be due to me playing so many other sports in my youth, so I was always used to competition.

My main hope is for two safe runs.

"The track is a bit of a challenge for everyone. It's amazingly fast, the fastest track any of us has ever seen. Some of the guys have reached speeds of 150 kph. There are a few technical parts you have to get right.'' Japan-based Singleton flew from last week's event in Nagano to Salt Lake on Monday and by Tuesday was training on the track. Ahead of today's final training run, Singleton had just eight runs on the track.

"Generally I would like to have 40 training runs on a track before I race on it,'' said Singleton, who explained the Americans had limited the number of foreigners allowed to train on the track to give their own competitors an edge come next year's Games.

The 120 hopefuls for Salt Lake event were split into three groups of 40 and Singleton qualified with the first of five runs and recorded the fastest time in his group.

"I feel I had problems with a few of the corners, but even then most of the other guys were not even close,'' he said.

Patrick Singleton: qualified in style for today's World Cup luge event in Salt Lake City.