DON EMMERT / AFP/Getty Images

An Olympic countdown clock can be seen in this photo taken Feb. 5 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver will host the 2010 Winter Olympics, which begin Feb. 12, 2010.

One spot the United States is lacking, however, is the breakout star in the signature event of the Winter Olympics — women’s figure skating. There are no Michelle Kwans (or Tonya-Nancy dramas, at least not yet) on the horizon and the top contenders figure to be from Japan, South Korea and Italy.

Which could open the door for someone like Lindsey Vonn to be America’s big female star. Earlier this month, she became the first American woman to win a world championship in the super-G.

“I’m going to remember the feeling I had today,” Vonn said after she won. “I’m going to remember mentally how I was in the start and hopefully I can do the same thing in 2010.”

Bode Miller won his second World Cup title in 2008 and should be a top contender, as he tries to avoid a repeat of his embarrassing Olympic shutout in Turin.

The United States usually owns things in and around the halfpipe. Defending gold medalist Shaun White is the most famous snowboarder in the world by most accounts. He just won his fourth X-Games superpipe gold and figures to be a favorite in 2010.

“Incomparable to anything,” White said when asked about taking his success from the familiar climes of the X-Games into the Olympics. “I walk through airports and the whole airport would just start clapping.”

Lindsey Jacobellis has won five of the last seven X-Games titles in snowboardcross — including this year’s championship — but the top entry on her Wikipedia page remains the story about the gold medal she gave away in Turin when she hot-dogged the last few yards down the course and fell. She’ll be a favorite to win gold in Vancouver.

A new sport, ski cross, will be added to the freestyle schedule. It’s basically snowboardcross on skis, and its most familiar face could very well be a skier used to the more traditional way of getting down the mountain: Daron Rahlves.

A 12-time winner on the World Cup circuit, Rahlves took up a new sport for this Olympic cycle. At 35, he is still looking for his first Olympic medal.

“I want to be known as a skier more than just a ski racer,” he said recently. “It’s fun to change it up a little bit, getting into something that’s a new challenge.”

The new challenge for the organizers of the Vancouver Olympics is how to make them a success without hemorrhaging money.

“We had to stop and start again,” John Furlong, the CEO of the Vancouver organizing committee, said of the economy’s impact on the games. “We had to rethink everything.”

The good news is that sales of tickets and merchandising are brisk — a preliminary sign, at least, that interest in the Olympics doesn’t wane when the going gets tough.