Today, the nervous focus of leaders of NYC2012 is likely to be on Paris, as the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission begins its visit to New York City’s most formidable opponent in the competition to be host city.

Despite criticism about the Jets stadium plans and insufficient financial guarantees, Mayor Bloomberg and his allies pulled off a successful site inspection. The team at Liberty Plaza now understands IOC concerns and has a laundry list of items to work on, and plenty of time to do it before the July 6 vote. The message to NYC2012 is clear: Creatively put financial guarantees in place and come up with a stadium plan – any plan, no shovels required. The IOC voting members tend to be more interested in facts and less in details, and they just want to eliminate loose ends. As for the local opposition they heard, that just reaffirms that New York is part of a Western democracy.

The visit to New York was an opportunity to impress the evaluation team, comprised of a handful of voting members and a couple of technical experts who are to report their findings to the IOC. But Mr. Bloomberg’s dinner menu won’t be found in that report – and chances are, the voters will just skim through the 100-page document anyway. NYC2012 still has ample opportunity to plead its case firsthand to at least 100 more IOC members using the invaluable feedback from the team.

History shows that the site-evaluation visit tends to be more constructive for the bids involved and less of a deciding factor come the day of the vote. Around the time of the Beijing evaluation visit for the 2008 Olympics, organizers were forced to do damage control on global opposition to their campaign based on human-rights issues. And although there was no American bid, there was a House resolution opposing the bid, citing “China’s abominable human rights record.” Beijing won in a landslide.

This time, Paris is widely considered to be the front-runner among the five finalists. The French city unsuccessfully mounted campaigns for the 1992 and 2008 Olympics, and bid experience is invaluable, because committees can take advantage of previous plans and IOC feedback, and they build upon past relationships with IOC members. Beijing narrowly lost the 2000 Games and was compensated with 2008. Athens was denied for 1996 and then rewarded with 2004. Whether it’s that IOC members think they owe something to a previously snubbed bid or that they just feel more comfortable with the familiar, multiple campaigns seem to be part of the winning formula when bidding for the Olympics.

This week in Paris will be more about visiting old friends and reminiscing about past meetings than closely reviewing venues, such as the already built Olympic stadium, the Stade de France, which is well-known from the 1998 World Cup. Indeed, many elements from the 2008 bid remain for 2012, except for those needing improvement. And to honor their guests further, Paris 2012 has built at the planned Athletes’ Village an Olympic landmark, a structure almost 250 feet high and 33 feet wide that contains vertically stacked and lit Olympic rings. Perhaps Mayor Bertrand Delanoe will be reminding IOC dignitaries that the Statue of Liberty adorning the NYC2012 emblem was conceived and built in Paris and was engineered by a French guy named Eiffel, whose tower is currently draped with the words “Paris 2012” and could be the venue in seven years for beach volleyball.

To compete, NYC2012 must target the remainder of its campaign at a more personal level.

Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff will lead the charge at the three remaining IOC-approved events where bid committees may meet personally with voting members to tell their story. The New York team will travel to Brisbane, Australia, and Berlin in April and to Ghana in June, just days before the vote in Singapore. It is very likely that those events will account for more votes than the bid books and the evaluation visits combined. Each member will hear a different story tailored to his specific interests in the Olympic sport industry.

The Olympic bid process is complex and often seems nonsensical. Public perception of the race rarely matches the interests and needs of the IOC’s 117 voting members. That’s why NYC2012, despite some discord and much uncertainty related to its bid, still finds itself in a wide-open race.

Mr. Livingstone is the producer of GamesBids.com.