Vancouver and Whistler, B.C. officially started the five-year countdown clock to the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

"We know it's going to be the fastest five years of our life," said Jim Furlong, CEO of Vancouver 2010, on Saturday.

While support for the games is sky-high and controversy is at a relatively low ebb, not much has happened. That's about to change.

"It's a long way to go but there's a lot to do and the strategy is to use every minute of that to power the event up," Furlong said.

Construction of venues and improvement of the Sea-to-Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler is to begin soon.

That $600-million highway project is the object of a protest by the municipality of West Vancouver.

The provincial government wants an overland route for the highway widening, but the municipality wants the government to build a tunnel to reach the seaside of Howe Sound.

However, a reminder of a potentially bigger problem is available for all to see -- no snow.

The North Shore Mountains and the slopes of Whistler haven't seen much snow this winter. Some have even been bare at times -- victims of a freak weather system known as a Tropical Punch that brought in warm, wet weather from the Pacific Ocean.

Ski conditions haven't been this poor since 1976.

Those ski hills will host the ski and snowboard events, but when he was here last month, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge didn't appear concerned.

"If you look at the statistics of the last years there have always been snow and there will be snow during the games, I'm not worried about that," he said.

What Rogge and the Vancouver organizing team do worry about is how Canada will perform in 2010.

"We have to take the cause of preparing athletes very seriously or we'll be very disappointed in ourselves at the end," Furlong said.

Canada had its most successful Winter Olympics ever in 2002, winning 17 medals and finishing fourth overall at the Salt Lake City games.

The Canadian Olympic Committee puts the country's 1988 athletic performance this way: "The Calgary Winter Games showed the world what Canada was made of. Nineteen Canadians placed with high, top-eight finishes – a better over-all rating than ever before."

Translation: We only won five medals, none of them gold.

The goal for the Sea to Sky Games is 35 medals and first overall. To achieve that, the Vancouver Olympic Committee wants the federal government and corporate Canada to come up with $110 million to support Canadian athletes.

The next big public Olympic event will be in April, when the logo will be unveiled.

Construction on venues is expected to begin this summer.

With a report from CTV's Todd Battis