MACAU // The majority of visitors heading to the Asian gambling hub of Macau hope to hit the jackpot, but not all of them are relying on gaming tables or slot machines to bring them luck. Currently scattered among the thousands of punters that regularly flock to Macau are hundreds of Olympic athletes, who have descended on the former Portuguese colony to fine-tune their preparations for Beijing.
More than 300 from the British team are there, along with the United States men's basketball squad and competitors from Brazil, Mozambique and Argentina. Most teams chose Macau because it is close to Beijing, about three hours by air, and offers similar weather conditions to the Chinese capital. Some training venues are just a stone's throw from some of the gleaming new Las Vegas-style mega-casinos which have capapulted it past the American city as the world's largest gaming centre.
Macau is mostly hot and humid and often blanketed by thick smog, exactly what competitors are expecting in Beijing. "We actually started looking for a base to prepare our athletes for Beijing way back in 2003," the British Olympic Association chief press officer Graham Newsom said. "We looked at a number of countries in Asia and about six cities in China but we realised that Macau was the best one for us. The conditions are similar to Beijing so our athletes can come here to acclimatise and only have a short flight to Beijing. They can leave here in the morning and be in the (athletes') village by tea time.
"But just as important for us was that Macau has great sporting facilities after recently hosting events such as the 2005 East Asian Games." The BOA have spared no expense in transforming Macau into a little part of Britain. They have booked out a resort at Coloane Island featuring a championship golf course. * Reuters
