Moguls champion hopes to bump into more gold

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada — 

Wildly unpredictable weather, possible history on deck and one unhappy husband and wife.

Yes, there won’t be a shortage of potential intriguing potential story lines Saturday in the women’s moguls competition at Cypress Mountain, one of the first medal events at the Games.

First off: history.

If all goes well, Calgary-raised Jennifer Heil will erase a bit of annoying Canadian lore, namely that a Canadian has never managed to win a gold medal when the Games have been on home ground.

Granted, we’re not talking about a long list.

It is a list of two: Calgary (1988) and Montreal (1976).

And the hill is not long to climb for Heil, considering she is the defending Olympic champion and has shown no real appreciable drop-off in form, having won her last four World Cup events.

Then there is actually some history on her side: Three freestylers, two of them in women’s moguls, have won gold on home soil.

Her main threats look to be Americans Hannah Kearney -- the overall World Cup champion in 2009 and world champion in 2005 -- Heather McPhie, Shannon Bahrke and Michelle Roark, and Japan’s Aiko Uemura.

Said Kearney, who placed 22nd in Turin, Italy, and didn’t qualify for the final: “Unfortunately, last season and 2005 mean nothing today.”

Kearney joked about answering questions at a news conference earlier in the week about the weather, saying it was a good thing because she didn’t have to answer questions about herself.

“I only have to answer questions about snow,” she said.

Or the relative lack of it

Olympic organizers have put on an almost round-the-clock effort to fight Mother Nature on Cypress Mountain, getting the course ready by delivering snow from high elevations, via helicopter and truck, and were assisted by the real thing this week, finally getting snow, well, the old-school way.

But the other enemy of the freestylers -- rain -- is always a concern in Vancouver. It was raining hard on Friday night and more is forecast for Saturday.

Then there is an additional concern for another skier.

One of the veteran freestylers, the 35-year-old Roark, has found herself in the middle of a security dispute involving her husband Mike Hormell, who attends all of her races.

He got into trouble when he went to one of her practices earlier in the week without the appropriate credential and was summarily banned from the site, according to information on Roark’s Facebook page.

She did express optimism that they would get around the ban and he would be able watch her at the Olympics, in person.

“Luckily, I think Mike will get to see me compete,” Roark wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately the security is really tight. I miss having Mike to help me with my training, but I’m not going to let that [affect] my performance!”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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