Earlier in the day, at Downing Street, the Prime Minister will assure them that Government support for the project is beyond doubt.Tessa Jowell said: "It's going to be a tough week and our proposals will be subject to great scrutiny. (There is the option of visiting those further afield on Saturday) Little will be left to the imagination. At Lord's the famous pavilion will provide the backdrop to an archery competition and at the vast ExCeL centre in the Docklands some of Britain's finest in the martial arts will do battle for the benefit of the IOC commissioners.Although they may be involved in Games minutiae, the commissioners are like any other visitors to the capital in that they want to have some fun. It is along this route that the proposed Olympic Javelin train, billed as the panacea to spectator transport problems - will reach the Games site in seven minutes.In the afternoon the IOC party will split into three and travel by mini-coach, its way smoothed by specially adjusted traffic lights, to cover the other venues. They will then don hard hats for a journey by Land Rover through the unfinished stretch of the channel tunnel link between Stratford and Kings Cross. Work on an aquatic centre within the proposed park, comprising two 50-metre pools has already begun as bid leaders attempt to put an end to negative claims about the capital's sports infrastructure.The commissioners will be given a bird's eye view from the top of a high-rise pensioners' home of the proposed 500-acre Olympic Park of nine new venues, including an 80,000-capacity main stadium.

On the opening themes of concept, legacy, sport and the Paralympics, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Kelly Holmes, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and Jonathan Edwards will each make their pitch. The only "names" from sport are the commission's leader Nawal el Moutawakel, the Moroccan former Olympic hurdles champion, and the Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks, who replaced Matthew Pinsent as the athletes' representative on the IOC. Since being criticised in an IOC report last May for "often obsolete" transport the bid team have recruited Jim Sloman, organiser-in-chief of the Sydney Games, to fine-tune their technical bid and are in confident mood.All that effort has gone into impressing a team of 13 inspectors who have recently visited Madrid and will travel to New York, Paris and finally Moscow in mid March.Although the IOC has among its 125 members some of the biggest names in their sports, the evaluation commission is packed instead with experts in law, the environment and transport. Concerned that the commissioners' powers of endurance may fail, bid leaders have recruited guest presenters. Alongside them Phillippe Bovy, a professor of transport, and his fellow Swiss Gilbert Felli, the IOC's chief technocrat, are every bit as important.Their inspection begins this morning with the most arduous and least glamorous part of the four-day visit - a series of presentations lasting nine hours. The GLA is hoping cycling will make a further contribution to the IOC's decision-making when the Tour de France announce some time this spring which city has been selected for the start of the 2007 race.Alasdair Fotheringham writes for Cycling Weekly.

It has been described as the equivalent of a state visit and the most important chapter in Britain's relations with the Olympic movement for a lifetime. Kimi Raikkonen was lucky to escape serious injury after a a high-speed shunt during Formula One practice in Barcelona yesterday. The Finn injured a thumb after his McLaren suffered a wheel-rim failure, which flung the car into the barriers and destroyed much of the bodywork.Raikkonen was treated by doctors in the McLaren pit, but had suffered only bruising. The Royal and Ancient, the game's governing body, has decided that a decades-old bar on women playing at the Open Championship will be removed. Cycling's vital role in the battle for a thumbs-up from the International Olympic Council was reconfirmed yesterday when the Greater London Authority announced the creation of a new velodrome and other cycling facilities in the Lower Lee Valley in north-east London.