Patrick Singleton was on the coat tails, relatively speaking, of three-time gold medal winner George Hackl after his opening three luge training runs in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Bermudian is taking part in his second Winter Olympic Games after his appearance at Nagano, Japan four years ago.

Arriving in the US in confident mood after a good World Cup season, Singleton finished first out of 17 lugers in his draw in both runs on Wednesday.

Then yesterday, in his first of two runs, he finished second with his fastest time so far of 46.554 seconds.

German Hackl, who won gold in 1992, 1994 and 1998 to add to a silver in 1988, is seeking to become the first Winter Olympian to be on top of the podium on four consecutive occasions.

In his first run, the European came down in a time of 45.227 seconds, while Singleton crossed the line in 46.697 seconds. Singleton's second run was a marginally slower 46.785 seconds.

Hackl may not have been going flat out with the event itself this weekend, but Singleton was still pleased with his time.

He also finished ahead of the likes of Romania, one of the more established luge nations, as well as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Slovakia and Moldova among others.

However, the one cloud on the horizon is the weather. Forecasters have predicted a big snowstorm for the weekend and with Singleton's sled set up for hard ice, a heavy fall will affect his times.

"The qualifying runs were yesterday, this afternoon (Thursday) and first thing tomorrow morning," said Singleton's mother Sallie from the US. "Those are the last runs before the race on Sunday."

She said she believed a decision on who had met the mark and who had not would be made this afternoon and added: "I think he has pretty well qualified."