Sprint or Olympic Distance?

I have a question about training distances.

This year, August 2003 to August 2004, I am looking to compete in sprint triathlons.

I talked to a guy in my area that does triathlons and he told me "if you can do a sprint, you can do an olympic tri". Since, my goal for the fall of 2004 is to start training for olympic distances, would it be better for me (long term) to just start training those distances now?

In other words, if you trained olympic distance, would it be appropriate for sprint distance races?

I'm struggling with the idea, and I'm trying to keep myself from "getting ahead of myself" or "putting the cart in front of the horse".

I guess I am wondering if it would be better to:

[1] Train olympic distances even though I will be racing sprints in my first year

.. or ...

[2] Train sprint distances for sprint races, then jump up to olympic distances after this tri season is over.

Anyone have experience with this?

I am contemplating the idea based on information I have read that stated the longer the distance, the more important "basic skills" are. In other words, endurance is more important than speed and power in the longer distances. As a new trainee, my endurance is better than my speed and power. Do you folks find this to be true? I ask because with my current level of experience (a whopping 3 months), I have no idea how to evaluate the comments I read.

Here's my rationale for this question without making this post too long.

I am thinking it might be better to build the endurance first (this year) by training the olympic distances, and then working on icreasing speed and power in the second year vs. training sprint distance endurance, speed, & power, and then repeating the process the second year for the olympic distances. Is this a sound thinking?

Again I am asking because I have desire, dedication, etc but I do not have the experience to judge how it works "on paper" versus "in the trenches", and I would assume that there are folks here that have trained both sprint and olympic distances that could enlighten me.

I appreciate any input.