Unlike the organisers of the Winter Olympics, Bermudian luger Patrick Singleton is praying there will not be too much snow in Utah over the weekend.

Coming from an Island that is more famed for cricket and soccer than winter pursuits, Singleton is not afforded the luxuries of some of the crack teams.

Whereas competitors from the larger luge nations have more than one set of steels, or metal runners that make contact with the track, Singleton has but one.

"I hear on February 6 they are predicting a big snow storm," he said from the Olympic Village. "That is the biggest fear that we have at the moment. I was just in France and I had my sled in a French workshop all week preparing the steels. I am quite good friends with the French guys and I was able to take advantage of a lot of the new technology you can only get outside Bermuda and that will go into my sled.

"But the sled is set up for fast, hard ice and if it snows my sled will be extremely slow."

Singleton said adjusting the sled was not really an option.

"It is not something that I can fix at this stage unless my coach brings in a set of steels which are set up for snow," he said. "We could in theory prepare my sled for snow but it takes too many days to do it.

"If it snows one day here in training it won't be a problem just so long as the ice during the race is hard and fast."

Prior to travelling to the US, Singleton had spent a few days training in La Plagne in France on a track not dissimilar to the one he will be racing on in a few short days.

"I think it was the kind of training I needed to do just before the Olympic Games," he said. "We will see when we start training later this week how that paid off."

When he arrived in Utah from Frankfurt, Germany, earlier this week Singleton found himself the centre of attention.

A Japanese television crew met him at the airport and filmed his entrance to the Olympic village.

"It was quite impressive. Somehow one of the major Japanese networks managed to find out when I was arriving," said Singleton, who was a star at the Nagano Games in Japan four years ago. "I was even interviewed by one of Japan's big sumo wrestlers who has retired and is now a sports reporter."

Singleton said security was very tight in and around the Olympic site - something that has been well publicised since the events of September 11. But he said it was something he was more than happy to deal with.

"Two minutes in a line is nothing at all," he said. "I suppose if you were in a rush it might be different. There were reports of three hour delays here and there but it's not like that - it's an extra minute that you have to wait and what is that for security and peace of mind?"