As part of the 100 Days to the Winter Games celebration, three U.S. world champions talked to the media in a teleconference call on Wednesday: Erin Hamlin (luge), Chad Hedrick (speed skating), and Lindsey Vonn (skiing).

Luge world champion Erin Hamlin, 22, called in from Park City, where she and the rest of the U.S. sliders are speed training for Whistler. Already known as the fastest in the world, the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre promises to send sliders down the track at upwards of 90 mph.

At the Olympic test event — a World Cup last February — the highest recorded speed was 95.652 mph, clocked by German Felix Loch who finished third. The fastest woman, Natalie Geisenberger from Germany hit 89.054 mph.

“We’re bombing it off the top here from the ‘bob’ start, and it’s giving us the 80-plus miles per hour that we’re going to need, so I can really start getting comfortable at those speeds,” said Hamlin.

From Park City, the team will head to Whistler for more training next week. Hamlin, who hails from Remsen, New York, said that the U.S. sliders have not had the same amount of time on the track as the Canadians. But she was philosophical about home-track advantage — something she enjoyed in Lake Placid when she won her world title last February.

“No matter where you are, someone’s going to have it,” she said of home track advantage. “So we have to take away as much as we can from the training we have. Hopefully, it pays off.”

Chad Hedrick, who won gold in the 5,000-meter speed skating event at the 2006 Winter Olympics, called in from Berlin, Germany, where he’s currently training. Hedrick is 32 and lives with his wife Lynsey Elizabeth Adams and baby daughter Hadley in Spring, Texas.

The speed skating team had just learned that morning about Stephen Colbert’s offer to partner with U.S. Speedskating for the upcoming Olympics. Colbert mockingly plays a conservative talk-show host on the popular “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central.

Colbert extended the offer to raise money for the team after its title sponsor, DSB Bank NV, a Dutch bank, filed for bankruptcy.

“U.S. Speedskating is very fortunate to be put in this situation,” Hedrick said. “For [Colbert] to jump along and become a fan and want to support us and raise money for us so we can be our best, it’s a blessing. We really need to take advantage of it and go out and represent our country the best we can.”

Colbert is not outright sponsoring the team, instead asking fans to donate to the team at either www.colbertnation.com or at www.usspeedskating.org. It left Hedrick wondering what the offer is “going to boil down to,” but he still said that he is happy to have the support.

Hedrick also confessed that he is not all that familiar with Colbert. He doesn’t watch much TV so has never seen “The Colbert Report.” And while he said that he’s read “a little of his book,” he didn’t finish it — “no offense to the book.”

Double Worlds gold medalist Lindsey Vonn, 25, then joined the call from her new home in Vail, Colorado. She arrived in Vail earlier this week after racing the first World Cup of the season at Soelden, Austria — a giant slalom where she finished ninth. Now in Vail, she is training and testing skis on her own private course.

Ski and Snowboard Club Vail, which helped nurture Vonn in her pre-U.S. Ski Team years, made snow on the resort’s Golden Peak. According to Ski Racing Magazine, club coaches and crew members injected part of the hill to form a rock-hard icy surface on which Vonn can train slalom and test skis.

“I’m trying to get more training in and build some more confidence,” she said. “I haven’t really trained much injection unfortunately, and that’s what we raced on in Soelden.”

Although she claimed it was not her best performance, she was happy with a solid result.

Earlier this year, Vonn switched from Rossignol to Head skis and boots. Considered a risky move, especially in an Olympic year, Vonn said that she is happy with Head and has skis dialed in for every discipline but slalom.

“I feel like I could have a race set-up tomorrow if I needed it,” she said of her slalom skis and boots. “But I think I can still improve. We’re trying to fine tune the set-up and get every tenth of a second out of the skis and boots that I can.”

“It really helps when you have such good conditions,” she added. “We have perfect injection, which I don’t think anyone has right now.”

On November 10, Vonn will travel to Levi, Finland, for a World Cup slalom. She will then return to Vail to continue training until the World Cup comes to Aspen, Colorado, November 28-29, 2009.

As for Whistler, Vonn said that she is looking forward to the Olympic downhill on a new course cut specifically for the Games.

“The track is pretty challenging,” she said, “quite a bit more challenging than the last Olympics.”

Not only is the course better for her, but so is the location. She loves Whistler — “I feel definitely much more at home than I did, for example, in Torino.”