Even a neck injury could not prevent luger Patrick Singleton from sweeping to his maiden victory in a Winter Olympics warm-up.

Singleton, now in Winterberg, Germany for the final World Cup race before next month's Games in Salt Lake City, was forced to see a specialist and take three days off prior to the event in Calgary, Canada last week.

The Bermudian finished two tenths of a second ahead of the competition, which consisted of current and former Canadian racers, after runs of 46.7 seconds and 46.9 seconds.

"I have been dogged by injuries over the last couple of years and I have really felt good over the last two months," he said prior to heading to Europe.

"But earlier last week my neck started to act up again and I had to take three days off and went to see a specialist. To come back at the end of the week and win a race made me very happy."

Singleton said he believed he could go even faster when the real business starts in a few short weeks.

"The times were all faster than my training runs because I wore a faster suit and used faster equipment but I didn't pull out everything because I want to save a little bit for the Olympics," he said. "It was just a tuning-up race. It wouldn't rank on the same level as a World Cup but it was definitely encouraging."

It goes without saying that Singleton is in confident mood heading to Salt Lake and rightly so as the nearest some of his fellow competitors will get to the track is via their television set.

"There has got to be close to 100 guys who have qualified for the Olympics in the past two years but they are only taking 40," he said. "When I say 100 have qualified, these guys have all qualified at the top level, the A level, I am not talking about the B or C level.

"But to qualify for these Olympics as well as having to meet the regular standard they (the officials) are looking at the World Cup rankings from November and December and are taking only the top 40 guys."

Singleton said the luge had the most difficult qualifying criteria of any Winter Olympics event.

"When you qualified before, you knew you had qualified. Now, even if you met the standard on the world stage, there are a lot of guys finding out that they are not going," he said.

"I always suspected that that is what they would do because there are so many guys at a good level now. A lot of guys on teams around me thought it would not be a problem and now they are faced with being cut and it is obviously devastating for them.

"I worked hard and scored a lot of World Cup points in Lake Placid which secured my spot and a lot of other guys didn't.

"I took a risk going there because it is a very difficult track. The Germans and Austrians all avoided it because they said it was too dangerous but I took the risk and it paid off."

This week's event in Winterberg, north of Frankfurt, represents the last chance Singleton will have to race against the cream of the sport prior to Salt Lake.

"I am not sure what my team is going to do yet. I know the Bermuda delegation is going to the Olympics in the first week of February because our training starts on February 6," he said.

"But I want to stay away from the village, stay away from the media hype and try to get a bit more training in if I can. We are talking to different tracks at the moment and looking to see if we can stay in Europe for a bit longer, for an extra five days or so.

"The last World Cup race is on January 27 and then the official training runs start on February 6. The race is not until February 10 so you are looking at more than a week (without anything), so if we can get five days of those covered with training that will be great."

The only cloud on Singleton's horizon is whether his neck will last the distance.

"It is something that I have to weigh up - how hard do I train versus how well do I want to do in the Olympics," he said. "If I train hard I do well and if I don't train I don't do well, it is that simple. At the moment I am really nervous because I really feel I have worked so hard over the last few years and done so well, especially this season.

"I feel and my coaches feel I can put together four strong runs. The only question is how physically fit I will be having had problems with my neck. I will know when I arrive at Salt Lake how I feel and that will really determine how I do."