The deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, the president of the New York Jets, Jay Cross, and other prominent sports and development officials will gather this weekend to practice their lines.

They’re not trying out for Broadway. They’re getting ready for what is described as the “crucially important” four-day visit of the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission, which starts February 20.

The visit is the only time members of the international committee will come to New York City to evaluate its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games – and the city’s bid committee, NYC2012, is aiming to impress.

“The visit is crucial as this will be the only opportunity that we will have from now until the final decision in July to have the evaluation commission in town to show them our Olympic plan and share with them our dream for an Olympic Games in New York,” a spokesman for the city’s bid, Lazaro Benitez, said.

NYC2012, which is still polishing its plans for the visit, is expected to announce a day-by-day itinerary for the 13-member commission this week. But a few things are known for sure.

The evaluation commission members will stay at one of the city’s premier hotels, the Plaza, overlooking Central Park.

They will participate in two days of intensive briefings.

The assistant director of government and community relations for the Port Authority, Luis Rodriguez, said someone from the Port Authority – probably the aviation director or the executive director – will brief the visiting commission members on transportation and security.

The architect who designed the planned Olympic Village in Queens West, Thom Mayne, will brief the committee, according to the architectural firm Morphosis.

Governor Pataki will meet with the Olympics representatives while they are in New York. “He looks forward to their visit and to helping bring the Olympics to New York and prove to the IOC that New York has what it takes to host the 2012 Olympic Games,” a spokeswoman for the governor, Lynn Rasic, said.

For the second two days of their visit, the committee members will split up into groups and tour all the planned Olympic venues. They’ll visit existing buildings that would be venues for 2012 competitions, such as Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and the National Tennis Center in Queens, and they’ll examine plans for proposed facilities, such as the Olympic Stadium, which would be the New York Sports and Convention Center to be built on the MTA’s rail yards on the far West Side, and the Olympic Beach Volleyball Arena, which would be created at the former site of the Eastern District Rail Terminal on the Brooklyn waterfront.

The committee members will probably also try out the subways and water taxis that are vital elements of NYC2012’s transportation plan.

The Jets president, Mr. Cross, said he and other officials involved in the West Side stadium project would brief committee members from the Starrett-Lehigh building, overlooking the site of the proposed domed stadium. At the same time, the committee members would learn about other venues proposed for that part of Manhattan, including the International Broadcast Center, which would be used after the games as office space.

Mr. Cross said he would present the newly revised plans for the New York Sports and Convention Center to the committee members and explain how it would work under Olympic conditions.

“We’ll be developing new materials,” he said. “Presenting to the International Olympic Committee technical evaluation committee is very different from giving a presentation to ABNY.” He was referring to the Association for a Better New York.

Mr. Cross said the presentation to the Olympics group must be “very smooth,” because the impression the city makes on the evaluation commission will be “critically important” in determining the city’s chances of winning the competition to be host city.

Mr. Cross also expects to attend the one dinner that NYC2012 has scheduled for the visiting Olympics officials. He said he didn’t know yet where the meal would be. Representatives of various restaurants around town – including the 21 Club, where NYC2012 has held other events – said they couldn’t reveal who would be dining with them until afterward.

Although there will be one big night out, Mr. Cross said, the commission isn’t visiting for entertainment. “They’re not coming to town to be wined and dined,” he said. “They’re coming to town to work. It’s a very serious week of intense work on their part.”

The president of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, said it’s important that the city convey to the visiting officials the “international flavor of New York.”

“The more we do to give them a sense of New York as an international city, as a population of people who are from around the world and athletes from around the world, the better,” she said, adding that it’s also important for the mayor and the governor to convey to the committee the city’s strong commitment to being host of the games.

The producer of GamesBids.com, a Web site that tracks the Olympic movement, Robert Livingstone, said that ever since the corruption scandal revolving around Salt Lake City’s bid to be host of the 2002 Winter Games, there have been more rules governing site visits. The bid committee is allowed to give only “token gifts,” he said, and limits have been imposed on entertainment and dining.

He said New York City – or any of the other four finalists – probably couldn’t win based on its performance at this winter’s site visit, but if it makes a bad impression it could lose. He said he couldn’t think of anything New York could do to hurt its chances – and he said protests or negative advertising campaigns about various parts of the Olympic plan wouldn’t do any damage. “In a Western democracy,” Mr. Livingstone said, “if the evaluation team went there and didn’t see a protest, they’d begin to wonder.”

The members of the evaluation commission visited Madrid last week. They will visit London this week before hitting New York. The last stops on their schedule are Paris and then Moscow.

After the visits, the evaluation commission is to write reports for the entire International Olympic Committee, which is scheduled to select the host city July 6 in Singapore.