Olympic Focus on Bird's Nest

With the swimming events finished, the focus in week two of the 2008 Olympics turns to the athletics action at Beijing's 91,000 capacity Bird's Nest stadium.

Track and field odds
The men's long jump final, the past domain of such Olympic greats as Carl Lewis and Bob Beamon, leads the finals action on day ten (Monday). Irving Saladino will be hoping to add his name to that list and give the Central American nation of Panama its first gold ever at an Olympics (and just its third medal in history). The current world champion enters the contest a firm 8/13 favorite at Ladbrokes, ahead of Greece's Louis Tsatoumas, 4/1, and Cuba's Ibrahim Camejo, 5/1.

Other events to come to their conclusion on Monday include the women's 800m, pole vault and discus finals and the men's 400m hurdles.

Team sports: volleyball
Indoor volleyball has been an Olympic sport since Tokyo 1964. The men's tournament is a two-horse race between the two traditional powerhouses, Russia (winner of three Olympic volleyball tournaments as the Soviet Union) and two-time winner Brazil. The two look certain to make it to the knockout stages after cruising through the preliminary rounds.

Russia, who have already defeated the Brazilians at this tournament three sets to one, have rightly laid claim to tournament favoritism - 11/10 at Ladbrokes. Brazil is 11/4, well ahead of the next-rated team, the USA, at 5/1.

Unbeaten Brazil is an almost-unbackable 1.25 favorite at Betfair (using the decimal, rather than fractional odds system) to win its first women's Olympic volleyball gold. Italy, 3.5, the USA, 5, and three-time champion Cuba, 6 are also in the running. Hosts and two-time champion China have started badly with losses to Cuba and the USA, and are at odds of 8.6.

The story so far
Most of the swimming events have been completed, with Michael Phelps claiming the eight gold medals he was chasing at the beginning of the tournament. Ladbrokes has already begun taking bets on how many medals he'll win at the 2012 London Olympics, with 5/6 odds being offered on the two choices of five or more and four or less.

In the medal tally, China is getting away from the United States, with 32 gold medals late on Sunday to the Americans' 19, making the chance of a comeback unlikely. However the US can take consolation in the fact they have more medals overall (63 to China's 57). Most bookmakers actually had China as favorites for the most golds and the US as favorite for most medals, showing that this race at least has been predictable for bookmakers and punters.