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Athletes Gamble On Macau To Bring Home Olympic gold

A 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 delegates 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 piled into the enclave in recent years, catapulting it past Las Vegas as the world's largest gaming centre.