Moscow begin Olympic presentation
 |  Moscow is considered to be the outsider of the five bidding cities |
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MOSCOW, Russia -- Moscow have begun a four-day courtship of Olympic inspectors, wooing them with glitzy presentations for the right to stage the 2012 Games.
The Russian capital is widely viewed as the rank outsider in the race to host the Olympics but the bid committee will use the visit by the 13 inspectors to try to shed its underdog image.
Moscow is the last stop of the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission's tour of the five shortlisted cities.
Paris is the favorite, with London, Madrid and New York the other candidates.
Bid leader Valery Shantsev, Moscow's vice mayor, will show the commission around proposed Olympic venues as well as the city's best known attractions such as Red Square.
"We would like to present to the world a new Moscow -- a metropolis that carefully keeps its rich historic traditions," Shantsev said in a statement.
Many of the venues have been inherited from the city's 1980 Games, but others have yet to be built such as the 12,000-seat National Tennis Centre which is being named after former IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch.
The bid committee will have to provide their Olympic visitors with answers on how to address the city's crippling traffic problem, lack of hotels and inadequate airports.
On top of this, bid representatives have said they need to rid Russia of a Soviet-era image and overcome public prejudice associated with it.
Moscow can also count on the support of judo black-belt President Vladimir Putin, who will meet the IOC delegation at the Kremlin on Wednesday.
