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"It’s not easy being at the top," Holcomb said. "We have a big target on our back. Everybody expects great things from us."

And then there’s that super-fast track at Whistler Sliding Center, which resulted in a fatal crash for Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. Holcomb says it is the fastest one he’s ever seen, but says he’ll be ready when the bobsled competition kicks off later this week.

"It’s a tough track," he said. "it takes a lot of experience and there is no way to train for it. The only way to train is to go down the track."

Holcomb said Monday that he had only had about 40 training runs on the Whistler course. And although the Canadian teams have had more, Holcomb said that he and his Night Train team are in the same boat as the other four-man sleds.

Although plenty of experienced drivers have crashed, Holcomb said that it shouldn’t be a safety issue for bobsled.

"It’s not that the track’s not safe," he said. "It’s just fast and difficult."

But Holcomb knows about difficulty, having had to overcome a lot of adversity to get where he is, including battling a degenerative eye disease. The disease, known as keratoconus, was discovered only after Holcomb had a Lasik surgery around 2000 that actually accelerated his vision problems.

"It just kept getting worse," he said.

By 2006, when he competed at the Winter Games in Torino, his uncorrected vision in one eye was probably only 20-200 or 20-300.

Holcomb said his teammates new he had bad vision, and even teased him for being a driver with poor eyesight, but probably didn’t know the extent of it. "I kept a lot of stuff really quiet," he said. "I think I did a pretty good job of playing it off."

But by July 2007, contacts could no longer correct his vision and he was considering retirement. He just couldn’t take a risk, he said. "If I hurt somebody, I couldn’t live with myself."

It seemed like the only option was a dual cornea transplant, which would have required two years of recovery time and even them would leave his eyes vulnerable in a crash. Eventually, though he found a doctor in Beverly Hills willing to try a new type of surgery. After two surgeries—the first in late December 2007 and the second in March 2008, Holcomb had a sensation he hadn’t had in a long time—clear vision.

A year later, he was a world champion.

But getting his vision back actually made things tough for a while. "It was such a dramatic change," he said. "I learned to drive by feeling. It caused a lot of problems."

While he has gotten used to all that visual stimulation, Holcomb said he still prefers to keep the shield on his helmet a little dirty and scratched up.

Holcomb also has another way of adjusting to all that stimulation -- playing video games. Holcomb says first person shooter games help him handle all that visual stimulation.

"When you are playing Halo for the first time you are miserable because you can't do anything, there is so much going on. Everybody is killing you from all over the place," he said. "After three four days of playing, things start to slow down, you start to process the information faster. it really helps develop that sense of being able to process information faster."

For more on Holcomb’s geekier side, check out my companion piece at CNETNews.com.

Ina Fried is a Senior Writer for CNET News. She will be in Vancouver covering various angles for both CBSSports.com and her CNET Blog " Beyond B1nary ". You can also follow her on twitter at: http://twitter.com/Inafried