OLYMPIC BID: British deputy prime minister John Prescott - or his successor - will take the initial responsibility for overseeing preparations for the 2012 London bid, the International Olympic Committee will be told this week.

The bid team, in consultation with Richard Caborn, the sports minister, has come to the conclusion that if London is successful the first two years of preparations will be dominated by planning issues and the need to hammer out contracts.

With Prescott's department, the office of the deputy prime minister, already involved in the Thames Gateway project, he is likely to add London 2012 to his portfolio in the medium term.

Bid leaders will also tell the IOC evaluation commission that Sebastian Coe will initially stay on as leader of a transition team if London wins.

This is intended to head off concerns that followed the Athens experience, when the bid leader Gianna Angelopoulos departed immediately after the games were won, leaving the IOC to deal with strangers. Only after she returned as head of the organising committee four years later did the games get back on schedule.

The 13-member evaluation commission will spend today watching presentations from the bid team, including a key-note address from Coe in which he will stress the legacy benefits of a London games.

They will also hear the plans for transport and will be addressed by Tony McNulty MP, the transport minister, and Hugh Sumner, the head of Olympic Ttansport at Transport for London.

They will also hear from Steve Redgrave and the double gold medallist Kelly Holmes, who flew in from a training camp in South Africa yesterday.

"I think London should host the games and I honestly believe we will," she said. "I've seen the plans in detail now, and they're absolutely great - the sporting facilities which are planned, the transport structures, the regeneration plans, the job creation schemes.

"It's not just a games for London; I'm convinced now that it's one for the whole of Britain, an event to bring the nation together."

The culture secretary Tessa Jowell echoed Holmes's confidence and said she was certain London could win over the IOC. "The way IOC members vote is not an exact science," she said. "It is an unpredictable combination of consideration of the global, strategic and intensely personal factors. We have to address those concerns at all levels - and I know we can."