Since the September 11 atrocities, in the immediate aftermath of which the wisdom of proceeding with the Games in America was questioned by a number of International Olympic Committee members, President George Bush has increased by 40m US dollars (€44.9m) the Games’ security budget, taking the sum total close to 250m US dollars (€280.7m).

Eight thousand policemen, many of them armed and plain-clothed, will be on duty throughout the February 8-24 event.

The last occasion an Olympic Games took place on American soil a bomb exploded in Atlanta’s Centennial Park.

But the new International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge insisted that he was ‘‘totally confident’’ the security measures put in place were adequate.

He added: ‘‘We have added more resources, more personnel. These extra efforts are important because there is absolutely no doubt that the Olympic Winter Games must go on.’’

Increased security means a increasing number of logistical problems for the Games organisers, not least because the aforementioned ‘security bubble’ must stretch over a huge distance, even by Winter Olympic standards.

Ogden, venue for the alpine events, is 60 miles away from the Olympic village near downtown Salt Lake, and the venues for bobsleigh, biathlon and snowboarding are little closer.

Even so, the Salt Lake Organising Committee are confident they have learned lessons from the transport chaos which blighted the Atlanta Games six years ago, and that the 4,000 athletes and thousands of spectators from all around the world will get to enjoy what they came for - the greatest ice show in the world.

The men’s downhill, the Games’ blue riband event, may be missing the great Austrian Hermann Maier, who is still recovering from a car crash, but there will be plenty of other speed kings and queens in action, not least in skeleton, which makes its return to the Olympics after a 54-year absence.