Action from the Bobbahn track at Winterberg during last year's World Cup. There have been complaints that the home competitors have had an unfair advantage through early practice ©Bongarts/Getty Images

"Germans training on the 2015 @FIBT World Championship track while everybody else has to watch. Yeah, that's fair," tweeted Steven Holcomb of the United States, an Olympic bronze medallist at Sochi last year in the two-man bobsleigh.

But this year the history in Winterberg could be made in the skeleton events by three "foreigners".

Yarnold, a 26-year-old from Sevenoaks in Kent, is seeking to complete a landmark quadruple achievement with a World gold that would complete her set in the skeleton event, having added the European gold this year to the Olympic and World Cup titles she won in 2014.

"It would be an honour to be the first Briton to hold the World, Olympic and European titles together," said Yarnold, who will be one of six British competitors at the Championships.  "I'm feeling really motivated."

Britain's Olympic and European skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold, pictured at the World Cup in Königssee in January, is seeking a triple crown of titles in Winterberg ©Bongarts/Getty Images

Meanwhile, Tretiakov is hoping to keep his global winning run going having taken gold at the last World Championships to be held, two years ago in St Moritz, and at last year's Winter Olympics in the home setting of Sochi.

The two-woman bobsleigh also sees a 2013 world champion returning to defend the title as Olympic champion - in the form of the Canada's Kaillie Humphries, who is in Germany with brakewoman Melissa Lotholz.

With practice runs starting tomorrow ahead of the first final on Thursday (February 26), an event opener is planned this evening in the local marketplace, at which one of the features - along with Sauerland brass bands - will be an open forum discussion about the event.

There is much local history for home supporters to reflect upon with relish.

Twelve years ago, Winterberg's role was to provide the setting for the two woman bobsleigh event, while other World Championship events were held at Lake Placid (men's bobsleigh) and Nagano (men's and women's skeleton.)

Susi Erdmann and Annegret Dietrich duly obliged with gold in front of the home crowd, ahead of fellow Germans Sandra Kiriasis and Ulrike Holzner, with another German pairing, Cathleen Martini and Yvonne Cernota also making it onto the podium.

In 2000, Winterberg had also hosted the women's bobsleigh element as it made its World Championship debut, with gold going to the home pair of Gabriele Kohlisch and Kathleen Hering, who held off the challenge of silver medallists Jean Racine and Jennifer Davidson from the United States and third-placed Françoise Burdet and Katharina Sutter from Switzerland.

For Kohlisch, this was a final golden flourish at World Championship level after a luge career which had seen her win four mixed team and two single women's titles between 1990 and 1995 before switching to bobsleigh in 1998.

Germany's Gabriele Kohlisch (right) pictured with her brakewoman Kathleen Hering at the 2000 FIBT World Championships in Winterberg as they realise they have won the first two-woman bobsleigh world gold ©Bongarts/Getty Images

Kohlisch, who was born in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) and initially competed for East Germany, is one of only two competitors to have won World Championship gold medals in both bobsleigh and luge, the other being fellow German Erdmann.

The first World Championship action at Winterberg took place in 1995, when the German resort hosted the men's bobsleigh events, while skeleton events took place in Lillehammer.

The German pairing of Christoph Langen and Olaf Hampel established the gold standard for the home nation in the two-man bob, and gold in the four-man went to their team mates Wolfgang Hoppe, René Hannemann, Ulf Hielscher and Carsten Embach, with Austria taking silver and another German four striking bronze.

Now Winterberg anticipates holding the whole World Championship ensemble for the first time since the events were merged into the same location in 2004. Since 2007, those events have included the mixed team competition, consisting of one run each of men's skeleton, women's skeleton, two-man and two-woman bobsleigh.

Yarnold and Tretiakov will be approaching their respective skeleton events with growing confidence given their recent achievements.

Just over a week ago on the Sanki Sliding Centre track where she had won her 2014 Olympic gold, Yarnold triumphed again in the final round of the FIBT World Cup.

A week before that she had claimed her first European title at Igls in Austria, on the same track where she had won the penultimate World Cup race of the season a day earlier. Austria's Janine Flock took silver, with bronze going to Yarnold's team mate Rose McGrandle.

It has been a storming end to the World Cup season from the defending champion - but not enough for her to hold onto her title. Having endured the first serious crash of her career during training in December, Yarnold experienced dizziness in winning the opening World Cup race in Lake Placid and missed the following World Cup in Calgary on medical advice.

That caused a gap she was unable to make up despite winning five events, and her overall title passed to Flock, who finished fourth in the concluding Sochi race.

Nevertheless, it was a season of high achievement both for Yarnold and some of her younger colleagues.

"This post-Olympic season has been very exciting for GB," said British Skeleton performance advisor Andi Schmid. "We are absolutely the top women's nation in the world with three sliders in the top 10".

Germany's hopes of maintaining their gold standard in this event at Winterberg will rest with the woman who finished third overall in the World Cup standings, Tina Hermann, and former world champion Anja Selbach, who was third in Sochi in what was the last World Cup race of her career.

Like Yarnold, Tretiakov also won the concluding World Cup skeleton event in Sochi but failed to secure the overall title.

Russia's Alexander Tretiakov pictured at the Closing Ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, where he won skeleton gold. He will seek to defend his world title in Germany ©AFP/Getty Images

The runner-up position secured last Sunday (February 15) was enough to secure a sixth overall World Cup gold for Martins Dukurs of Latvia, the 2011 and 2012 world champion.

Dukurs looks an obvious threat to Tretiakov's world title, although the Russian will also be looking out for the Latvian's brother Tomass, second overall in the rankings.

Sungbin Yun, who also won a place on the podium in Sochi last week, looks another likely contender having become the first South Korean athlete to make the World Cup podium at Calgary in December.

Germany's hopes, meanwhile, are likely to rest with the man who finished third overall in this year's World Cup despite not having won any of the events - the 2012 junior world champion Axel Jungk.

Tretiakov, meanwhile, will enter competition with the knowledge that he holds the course record at Winterberg thanks to his time of 56.88sec set on November 28, 2008.

Canada's Kaillie Humphries, pictured after winning gold in the two-woman bobsleigh at the Sochi Olympics, is also seeking another global gold in Winterberg ©AFP/Getty Images

The pattern with Yarnold and Tretiakov has been repeated in the World Cup as far as Humphries is concerned. Her pairing has been beaten to the overall title by the US crew of pilot Elana Meyers, the Olympic silver medallist, and her brakewoman Cherrelle Garrett.

Victory in the concluding race at Sochi on February 14 was the sixth out of eight for the Americans, who thus took the first overall World Cup title for the US in this event since Jill Bakken's win in 2001.

But Humphries, who has been working hard in a Munich training camp all week, lifting weights and trying to "work on her explosiveness" over the opening 15 metres, will have her own ideas about how this competition will go.

Latvia's dreams of glory will not be confined to the men's skeleton event thanks to the extraordinary range of talent displayed by Oskars Melbārdis.

Melbārdis and his brakeman Daumants Dreiškens claimed their country's first overall World Cup bobsleigh victory in the two-man event thanks to a second-place finish in the final race at Sochi.

Oskars Melbārdis, pictured settling into his two-man bob ahead of brakeman Daumants Dreiškens at the Sochi 2014 Games, has won overall World Cup titles this year in both the two and the four-man bob ©Getty Images

Rico Peter of Switzerland, with brakeman Simon Friedli, underlined his World Championship prospects by winning the Sochi race by 0.13sec, with Switzerland's Olympic silver medallists, Beat Hefti and Alex Baumann, earning a third place on the day which saw them finish second in the overall standings, one place above their colleagues.

Holcomb, the defending World Cup champion, finished fifth - his best result of the season so far.

Melbārdis doubled up to earn overall World Cup victory in the men's four-man bob also, winning five of the eight races, including the concluding one in Sochi, with his two-man brakeman Dreiškens supplemented by the pushing power of Arvis Vilkaste and Jānis Strenga.

But there will be a strong challenge in the four-man from the Russian outfit steered by Alexander Kasjanov, whose second place in last week's Sochi race bettered the time set by his team mate Alexandr Zubkov in winning gold at the previous year's Olympics.

Germany's prospects here rest with the crew piloted by defending world champion Maximilian Arndt, which finished third both in Sochi and the overall World Cup rankings.

Britain's bobsleigh squad will be missing two of its most experienced competitors in pilots John Jackson and Paula Walker, due respectively to injury and pregnancy.

Their 14-strong squad includes Sochi Olympian Lamin Deen and features the latest converted track-and-field athlete in Simeon Williamson.

Williamson, a 29-year-old from Islington, thus follows in the footsteps of former fellow sprinters such as Marcus Adam and Craig Pickering. The north Londoner has a 100 metres best of 10.03sec and competed at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, as well as taking a bronze medal in the sprint relay at the following year's Athletics World Championships in Berlin.

"It's very much a transition year for us," said GB Bobsleigh performance director Gary Anderson.

"Deen has also shown that with the fastest starting crew available he can be up there challenging the world's best.

"But for us it is all about the trajectory towards 2018 [Pyeongchang Olympics] and the World Championships in Winterberg are a stepping stone to that."

Winterberg was selected for these World Championships on July 16,  2011 during the FIBT congress in Pyeongchang.

Completed in 1977, the track underwent a redesign of its start house area where the women's luge start house was moved from before turn four to near the men's luge start house prior to turn one in 2006.

It is the only track of its kind in the world with a turn that has corporate sponsorship, with turn seven being sponsored by Veltins, the German brewery which has its headquarters in neighbouring Meschede and which is also title sponsor of the Schalke 04 football stadium.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play - the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.