Simon Lewis, Vancouver

THE long wait for Aoife Hoey and Claire Bergin (pictured right) to join the Winter Olympic party is nearly over and Ireland's bobsleigh crew are raring to go.
For more than three weeks they have been holed up on Whistler Mountain as the whole world has gone slightly loopy all around them.
They have heard Australian and Brazilian blazers try to enter the women's two-man bob competition at their expense. They will have watched poor 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili being tossed like a rag doll against an exposed metal pole and breath his last on the same ice they will finally compete on tonight at the Whistler Sliding Centre.
And their nerves will have been further shredded by the sight of several of their male bobsleigh counterparts crashing left, right and centre during their training runs on that very same chute of ice that they will be hurtling down in a matter of hours.
Most of all, though, the 6ft 4ins bobsleigh pilot Hoey and her 5ft 6ins brakewoman Bergin, both former track and field athletes, will have waited.
They have waited so long that when given the chance to sit out the sixth and final official training run last night, the thought of taking a breather never crossed their minds.
“Otherwise it's a lot of sitting around thinking too much,” said Bergin , when asked why the Irishwomen had taken one last trip down the fastest track in the world.
“If you can do it (take time off) that's great,” Hoey said, “but we haven't had a lot of runs here and we need what we can get. We did four runs three weeks ago then eight this week. That's all we have.”
Hoey certainly put that time to good use, shaving almost half a second off her time over the course of the three training sessions – an enormous improvement in the bobsleigh world where the difference between gold and silver can be as little as hundredths of seconds.
They may still be at the wrong end of the 21-team field in terms of their times but they are determined competitors and they are about to become athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympics, which is something that can't be said of the Brazilian women's bobsleigh team.
The Australians won their legal appeal to be included in the competition but not at Ireland's expense and Hoey will be keenly exercising her right to compete.
“We actually qualified for the Olympics,” she said pointedly at the weekend. “We're here and that's what we're focusing on.”