BRISBANE, Australia – The leader of New York’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, Daniel Doctoroff, doesn’t want sympathy votes from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when International Olympic Committee members decide this summer on which city will get the nod.

“People ask if sympathy will play a role: New Yorkers don’t want people’s sympathy,” Mr. Doctoroff, a deputy mayor, said at a meeting in Brisbane, where the five cities vying for the 2012 Games presented their pitches Saturday to a meeting of the Oceania National Olympic Committees.

New York is competing with London, Paris, Madrid, and Moscow, with the IOC meeting July 6 in Singapore to vote on the 2012 site.

Mr. Doctoroff said more subtle issues than sympathy might sway IOC members in New York’s favor.

“The perception of New York and New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11 changed for many people around the world,” he said. “People saw the very values that I think lie at the foundation of the Olympic movement: courage, resilience, the ability to get up after a defeat and move forward determined to be greater than before. That’s not a bad thing.”

Mr. Doctoroff said New York’s vibe and multicultural appeal made it the perfect place to host the Olympics. Having people from hundreds of nationalities and ethnic groups living and working in the city meant every Olympian would have some kind of hometown support.

The attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 could have forced the Big Apple to become more inward focused, but it didn’t, said Mr. Doctoroff.

“When 9/11 occurred, New Yorkers were forced to ask themselves a fundamental question: Do we want to continue to offer ourselves as being this incredibly open place? What was at tacked was that very notion. That’s why people from 92 countries died in those two buildings,” he said. “The resounding answer was ‘absolutely!’ That’s the essence of what we want to offer for the Olympic Games. New York is committed to rebuilding. Our plans for the Olympic Games play a major role in the rebuilding, the next phase of New York’s evolution.”

The New York bid got a boost from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s decision this week to accept a proposal by the New York Jets to develop an unused railway yard into a stadium on Manhattan’s West Side. The stadium is the centerpiece of the New York Olympic bid, and getting approval demonstrated that the bid team could deliver on its promises.

“When the IOC awards a city the games, it is entering into a long-term partnership … entrusting their franchise to a group of people and they need to know those people will be worthy partners,” Mr. Doctoroff said.

Mr. Doctoroff said the New York bid had overcome the stigma of the bribery allegations associated with the awarding of the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City, the perception that it’s difficult to obtain visas, and recent doping scandals.

“A year or so ago, you would have said we had a series of liabilities. Either with time or proactive steps we’ve taken, those liabilities have disappeared or been turned into assets,” he said.

The other candidate cities have discounted the possibility that September 11 could give New York an advantage, and so have senior Olympic figures.

“The IOC, in my humble opinion, will not be led by emotional issues,” the Olympic committee’s president, Jacques Rogge, said when New York was unveiled as America’s bid city. “The New Yorkers themselves would want to win only on the quality of the bid.”