The men's 10,000m is in rude health. You have the Bekele brothers, who have both run 27:02.30 this season, Wilson Kiprop and Moses Masai, who also are on the cusp of 27. So it's incredibly difficult, and these guys tend to save their best for the Olympics.
However, Mo has bullets in his gun that no one else has. If they go with four laps to go — fine, he can run a 4.10 mile off the back of a 10k. If they stick together until the last 400 — fine, he can do a 52s last lap. But to win gold he has to run a very clever, tactical race. He needs to just sit tight for the first half of the race, run within himself, run the shortest distance possible.
I would be perfectly happy if he did nothing for the first 7k. The problem at the World Championships was that he went too early and Ibrahim Jeilan sniffed the opportunity. He can't make the same mistake this time, and if he runs his perfect race he has a great chance. There is also the worry of the Kenyans and Ethiopians running as a team — but Mo has his training partner with him, the American Galen Rupp. He's a tricky customer himself, and to have him with Mo could help him.
No one's been speaking about our chances in the long jump but Britain is in good shape at the moment. It was a huge shock to see Irving Saladino crash out of qualifying without registering a jump. The Olympic champion is out and it's wide open. Mitchell Watt of Australia is the stand-out athlete for me, he is capable of jumping 8.50 and if he gets near his personal pest of 8.54 he should be the main gold threat.
But Greg Rutherford and Chris Tomlinson have overcome their injury problems to cruise into the final with very comfortable first-round jumps. Greg was 25cm off the board, barely got any elevation and still jumped 8.08. That tells me he's capable of as long as 8.40, which in this field — which is wide open — would get him a medal.
Greg is the world lead jumper at the moment and I'm surprised that people haven't marked him out as a real medal threat. Chris, meanwhile, knows this is probably his last chance and it's brilliant to see him in the final. He knows now that he's got it in him to jump the 8.23 that got him bronze at the European Championships in 2010, and if he gets somewhere around that this time he has a genuine chance of a medal.
Jessica Ennis has had her best ever first day. You have to take the rough with the smooth in heptathlon, and to run two personal bests from four is incredible. She had her opponents on the ropes from the off, dominating them quite literally from the first few seconds. Ideally she'd have liked three more centimetres in the high jump and a longer shot put, but those times in the hurdles and the 200m blew her opponents away.
Now the issue is quite where the threat comes from — Nataliya Dobrynska seems out of it but Tatyana Chernova has a very strong second day, although she's more than 300 points behind after an ordinary opening day. Still, it looks like the Lithuanian Austra Skujyte is the main challenger, and she could erode Jess's 184-point lead in the javelin, so Jess will have to match her in the long jump.
The multi-eventers are a bit like golf in that you can afford to miss a couple of greens so long as you set a course record and tidy up the other rounds. That's kind of what Jess has done so far, and she needs to make sure her weaker events — the javelin and long jump — are solid. I've said before about Jess that her long jump is an Achilles heel of sorts in that she can put herself in trouble if she gets a no jump with her first attempt.
Since she changed her take-off foot following that metatarsal injury she has at times struggled, more with her confidence than anything else, so she needs to get a decent jump off the board early on. By that I mean 6.40, even 6.35, and she can relax and look to build on that total. She just needs to be solid as her runs on the first day bode very well for the 800m.
If she's solid on the two weaker events she will still have a five-second lead on Skujyte going into the 800m, in which she should easily be better than the Lithuanian. But a word of caution — Jess leads by 184 points at the moment. After the first day at Daegu she led by 151 and still lost it.
I've had a flutter on Christine Ohuruogu to win the women's 400m. No one is backing her but she ran past Amantle Montsho at Crystal Palace to win in the rain in 50.3 seconds, so I have no doubt that if she is in touch with 50m to go she can catch anyone. Christine is like a racehorse with her finishes, within 5m of the leader and she's getting caught.
My only concern is that she was a bit sloppy easing up at the end of her heat, which puts her in lane one for the semis. That could make it tough for her to get the kind of lane draw she'd like for the final.
I was also hugely impressed by Dai Greene. He exudes that confidence, that self-assured balance walking into a stadium that all athletes want. Like Christine, you always back him if he's within reach of the leader heading into the final straight. The main contender is Javier Culson, but he always looks like a man clinging on to his early-season form, clinging on to his lead in a race. Dai, meanwhile, grows into a championship and always looks like he's improving. He has a fantastic chance.
The women's 10,000m was incredible, astounding, a historic race. Tirunesh Dibaba has become the first woman to defend that Olympic title and it was one heck of a race. Obviously the East Africans dominate, but to see the British pair coming through as best of the rest — in massive personal best times — shows the sport is in good health in the UK. But this race will go down as the one where Dibaba confirmed herself as a legend.
Former javelin world record holder and twice Olympic silver medallist Steve Backley will be an expert consultant for Eurosport-Yahoo! during the London 2012 Games.