The Loongs road to Milan starts here

"I honestly don't really have too many expectations, besides showing up every day and trying my hardest. That's what I do every day, and it's been working out for me," said the 31-year-old distance-event specialist.

"I've also been working on the mental aspect of my skating. It's definitely a really hard sport mentally. A lot of things can happen that are out of your control, and sometimes that's really frustrating. But, I just try to really take it one step at a time, one race at a time," said Santos-Griswold, who won four gold medals on the tour to become the third American winner of the globe trophy.

With all the world powerhouses on its doorstep, the ambitious host team — known as the "Chinese Loongs" — won't be satisfied with just doing its best this coming weekend, after a relatively thin medal harvest from the tour — and more crucially, from last month's Asian Winter Games — it is fired up to live up to its aggressive tour moniker.

"Everyone is in pretty good form, and we all expect to show more fight on our home ice for sure," said Sun Long, China's men's 1,500m defending world champion.

"I believe we have what it takes to go and compete for gold in all relay events, while racing at home and being cheered on by our own crowd with the red flags flying. That will definitely give us an extra push to go for the best results we can," said Sun, who won his second 500m gold this season at the tour's Italy leg last month, on the same rink that will host the Olympic short-track competition in Milan.