The gaming tables of the casinos here are strictly off limits to the Olympic team who are preparing for Beijing, but the British Olympic Association is still taking a £1m gamble.

The gaming tables of the casinos here are strictly off limits to the Olympic team who are preparing for Beijing, but the British Olympic Association is still taking a £1m gamble. That, according to camp director, Bernie Cotton, is the approximate investment made in the five-week camp for some 300 athletes, coaches and other team personnel at this resort on the South China Sea. It is the gateway to the Games for the majority of Britain's team.

The BOA scoured Asia before Cotton and his colleagues picked the former Portuguese colony. They believe it provides the optimum base for their Olympic assault. It's just a short flight from the host city. The aim is to acclimatise to the heat and humidity, often more than 80%, and the seven-hour time change. Similar camps in Talahassee (before Atlanta, 1996), Queensland (Sydney, 2000) and Cyprus (Athens, 2004), proved their worth.

"We want to ensure the team is as well prepared as it can be," said Cotton. "It's a peaceful environment, close to the best facilities available. We looked at cities which had hosted multi-sport Games, because we assumed they'd have a range of facilities - places which had held Asian Games, East Asian Games, World Student Games and Olympics."

It started with desk research, then visits to review Bangkok, Hiroshima, Seoul, Hong Kong, Fukuoka. "Bangkok and Hong Kong were busier, a bit frenetic," said the former Olympic hockey player, manager and coach.

"We thought, why prepare in a Japanese culture when we were coming to a Chinese one? Korea's facilities are 20 years old, and beginning to creak a bit. We went into China looking at five or six places where rowing, athletics and swimming could be together, give us the core. In a way, a sports hall for badminton is the same everywhere, but a rowing lake next to an athletics track and synthetic turf hockey pitches are quite difficult to find."

Once rowing and canoeing decided to prepare on the Olympic venue in Beijing, other options opened. When a group of Britain's Olympic performance directors visited Macau, venue for the 2005 East Asian Games, they were convinced. So now the team is in a five-star resort surrounded by lush vegetation overlooking a sandy beach.

However, cosseted though they might appear to be, eased on a diplomatic fast-track from Hong Kong airport to the Macau ferry, through customs and airport transfers with special baggage tagging and no collection worries, there is no doubt they are here for business.

Every competitor has received a 20-minute sports-specific DVD of what to expect. "It saves a Powerpoint presentation when they arrive," explains Cotton's deputy, former curler Mike Hay. There is a former Met Police officer who delivers a six-point security briefing. "Macau is a safe place," says Hay. "But there are certain rules."

Athletes must specify to team managers where they will be at all times. This is mainly to comply with intensified International Olympic Committee anti-doping regulations. Even a one-hour schedule-change must be notified to the IOC in Beijing. British rules are that competitors must go nowhere alone, always in pairs. They may leave the hotel only with permission of team managers, but must report back by a specified time. They can visit the shopping malls, mainly in casinos, but the tables are taboo for athletes, coaches and management.

On arrival, there is a 15-minute medical check for every competitor. One of the team doctors is Jonathan Hanson, a GP from the isle of Skye who has worked with the Scottish Rugby Union. Consultation includes investigation of any medication a competitor may be using.

"The aim is to prevent the type of incident when Alain Baxter was using an inhaler with different contents from the one he was accustomed to in Europe," says Hay. This cost the Scottish skier Olympic bronze in Salt Lake City, though he was innocent of any attempt at performance-enhancement.

Hay won five European curling golds and was twice world runner-up. During his time as national coach, Scotland won three world titles and four Scots comprised the rink which won Olympic gold six years ago.

He left the Scottish Institute of Sport two years ago to become BOA performance manager for winter sports, starting the week that former England rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward joined as performance director. Hay is answerable here to the deputy chef de mission, Mark England, formerly head of sport development for Glasgow City Council.

Cotton and Hay will switch roles for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, with the Scot in charge. Both will have key roles in London 2012.

When he was coaching the Scottish team at the European curling championships in Vierumaki, Finland, in 2001, Hay could never have envisaged the contrast between then and now. "The temperature there never rose above freezing, the whole time," he recalls. "It was several degrees below, even inside the arena." Seven years on, the temperature here has dropped below 30 degrees only marginally, and at night."

Butterflies as big as your hand flit among the bushes. As we travel to the resort, my driver swerves to avoid a large snake. We arrive to find a wide sign across the width of the hotel lobby, welcoming the British team. The Olympic motto appears in English, and then in Chinese script. One could run 100 metres in the time it takes to execute the elegant brush strokes: gan kuai, gan gao, gan qian - faster, higher, stronger.

The language has no comparative: more fast, more high, more strong.But locals understand it instantly. In this alien but friendly culture, the universality of the Olympic language is strangely comforting.

Less so are the plain-clothes armed police, though they move most unobtrusively around the team hotel.

There is little chance of the athletes mixing with the holidaying families. "We have taken over the whole of the second floor and converted it into a home from home," says Cotton.

"We have our own dining room, and eat separately from the other guests. The menus are planned by BOA nutrition consultants in conjunction with the executive chef, who is an Australian and understands - they've had Barcelona FC here before, and Portuguese teams.

"We'll have lounges, hopefully, with BBC-feed TV once the technical issues are sorted out. We have a cyber cafe where athletes can communicate with home and use the internet. There's a games room, pool tables and so on.

"These are slightly more comfortable conditions than the Beijing athletes' village. There, the rooms are smaller and the beds are slightly less comfortable. Though they will sleep well in the village, we think it's better that they stay healthy and get good sleep here."

If that's an oblique reference to perceived pollution on the mainland, Cotton does not say so.

"There's a lot of walking in the village. Central dining is sometimes a bit of a trek from the accommodation, as is the transport mall, for vehicles to go to training facilities. Training times at the village are always allocated when it's convenient to the organisers, not necessarily when it's best for the athletes. Here in Macau, we have booked the prime time for our athletes to train."

There is no official medal target for the BOA, says Cotton: "My target here is to run the best preparation camp ever run."

There will be no gold medals for that, but if perfect practice makes perfect, Britain seems to have left little to chance.