With a year and a half to go until the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, Canada's winter athletes have hit a new high, finishing their World Cup season with more medals than ever before.

Canadian athletes took home 184 gold, silver and bronze in winter sport circuits in the 2007-2008 season -- 49 more medals than last year.

"As soon as someone raises the bar, everyone on the team reaches that much higher and so it perpetuates the level of success," said Denny Morrison, a speed skater who holds the new world record in the 1,500 metres.

"I think it's awesome we have a strong team going into 2010," said Morrison, who hails from Fort St. John, B.C.

Squamish snowboarder Maelle Ricker has won six World Cup medals this year -- enough to give her two World Cup titles in snowboard cross.

Morrison and Ricker are part of an impressive list of 74 athletes who reached the podium this season -- the best-ever result for Canada in World Cup competition.

With 184 medals, Canada is ahead of winter-sports heavyweights such as Austria -- with 173 medals -- and even ahead of the United States, whose athletes brought home only 152 medals.

Only Germany did better, with 230 medals.

Add to that more than 110 fourth and fifth place finishes, the forecasts looks promising for 2010.

It's a vote of confidence for Canada's Own the Podium program, which put $110 million into coaching and better technology to take advantage of the country's raw talent.

"It's nice to have a good amount of funding to try new things so we don't leave anything, no stone unturned, in our drive to be the best we can be in Vancouver," said speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon.

Organizers hope that Vancouver will be a long way from Calgary twenty years ago, when Canada earned the dubious distinction of hosting the Olympics without a gold medal.

For Canadian Olympic officials, that's ancient history now.

"We were looking for a lot of strong improvements in performance this year, and we did get them, so we're delighted that a lot of things are working," said Roger Jackson of the Own the Podium program.

Britt Janyk won gold in the Women's World Cup downhill in Colorado in December. She's ecstatic that athletes are showing off what they can do.

"It takes years to build to this level, and we've done that and we are really sticking to our game plan," Janyk said.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jason Pires