AFTER months of preparation and rehearsals, senior politicians and professional campaigners will this morning begin the task of trying to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award the 2012 Games to London.
A 13-strong evaluation committee flew into the capital yesterday to begin a four-day inspection that will include a whirlwind tour of the proposed venues, a meeting at No 10 and dinner with the Queen.
Members of the team arrived separately from all over the world. First to land was the South African delegate, Sam Ramsamy, the anti-apartheid campaigner. He was greeted at the airport by Lord Coe, the London 2012 chairman, Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, and personal friends. He and his fellow IOC members were whisked to the Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf, the committee’s base until Sunday.
Rooms at the 142-room riverside hotel, which is only ten minutes by Tube from the proposed Olympic village in Stratford, East London, cost from £310 to £1,900 a night for the Presidential Suite.
Under anti-corruption rules introduced after the bribery scandal in Salt Lake City, the IOC will pay for the rooms themselves.
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This morning their first official engagement will be to sit through 17 presentations on the London bid. These will be made by, among others, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Porritt, the environmentalist, and Sir Martin Sorrell, the advertising guru.
Tomorrow there are visits to the various Olympic venues. All 13 members of the committee will travel to the proposed 500-acre site of the new Olympic Park in Stratford, which lies at the heart of the London 2012 bid.
The World Heritage Site of Greenwich would host equestrian events and the modern pentathlon while Regent’s Park would stage the softball and baseball tournaments.
From there the IOC is expected to split into groups to tour the other venues in different corners of the capital, such as Wimbledon and Lord’s.
On Friday they will attend a reception with Tony Blair at Downing Street before dining with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, where the Princess Royal, one of Britain’s three members of the IOC, will join them.
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Yesterday the London campaign received a boost from a survey carried out for the British Olympic Association which said that up to 55 per cent of foreign tourists thought that the city would be the best host for the Games. Half of French tourists supported London and 54 per cent of Americans also backed London, with only 22 per cent supporting New York.
Overall, 81 per cent of overseas tourists rated the capital’s public transport as excellent or good and most visitors rated the whole experience of a visit to London highly. Almost all aspects obtained more than 70 per cent of “excellent” or “good” responses.