IOC inspectors assessing the depleted field for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are expected in the French capital on Sunday (May 14), after their three-day stay in Los Angeles, commencing today.

The very fact that this year's formalities will be done and dusted in a week tells you something: in 2005, the 13-strong Commission's odyssey started in early February and stretched until mid-March, as Nawal El Moutawakel and her team ran the rule over a stellar line-up comprising Madrid, New York, London, Paris and Moscow.

And their peregrinations counted for something: as we followed in their wake, we watched the wheels fall off New York's otherwise impressive bid; this was over problems with its plan to build a $1.4 billion ($1.8 billion/€1.6 billion) Olympic stadium on the west side of Manhattan island.

Plus, with the benefit of hindsight, we saw the wind that had seemed for so long to be behind Paris, with the French capital quoted at odds of 2/7 in early February, start to shift direction.

The change in the weather was triggered largely by a trade union demonstration that saw a red Communist party barrage balloon flying over the city while the inspectors were in town.

I would be very surprised to see a repetition of that this time around. And while we now know that an audience with new President Emmanuel Macron has been granted, I am not so sure this will be over an Elysée Palace dinner washed down with a 1990 Château d’Yquem.

I would tend also to doubt that the room where press conferences are held will be equipped with eight chandeliers, as it was in 2005.

This time around, I am not even entirely clear what the Evaluation Commission is really for.

This is because of lingering uncertainty over whether or not this is a bona fide contest, as opposed to a distraction while the real power-brokers somehow determine which of these great cities will get first dibs and who has to wait until 2028.

Under different circumstances, the Commission might fulfil the valuable role of assessing if superficially attractive candidate-cities truly were ready to stage an Olympic Games, and if not, putting their finger on the reason why. But I think we already know the answer to that question with these two heavyweights.

Perhaps this explains why new Commission chair Patrick Baumann, while admirably clear about what the body is not proposing to do - "we are not conducting an examination" - seems woollier on what it is aiming to accomplish.

"[We] are looking forward to learning more about their proposals," the nimble-minded Swiss President of the newly rebranded Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) is quoted as saying in the recent IOC news release regarding the visits, adding: "We will discuss not only how hosting the Games would meet the needs of athletes, but also how it would serve the cities' long-term goals for social and economic development.

"We want to see how the Olympic Games will take shape in 2024."

Baumann talks about doing one other thing which has usually not been possible for Summer Games Evaluation Commissions in recent decades, certainly when it comes to the winning bidders, and which very much reflects the new realities of Olympic hosting.

This is "getting a first-hand look at the prospective venues".

In 2005, as on pretty much every other occasion since LA last hosted in 1984, this could not be done since - much as Commission member Sam Ramsamy might have enjoyed turning his hand to archery at Lord's cricket ground - the main facilities in the future Olympic Park did not yet exist.

The truth is, dare I say, that with only two candidates staying the course and the strong possibility that two Summer Games might be on offer, the latter stages of the 2024 race have become rather boring for those of us old enough to have been spoiled by the titanic clashes of yesteryear.

Under such circumstances, the remaining duo may have to work harder than would otherwise be the case to prevent opposition campaigns such as NOlympics LA from providing one of the main story-lines from this week's events.

No contest of course was more titanic than that 2005 race, with five global cities straining every sinew to land sport's most glittering prize and New York in particular, notwithstanding the fatal flaw that maimed the bid, pulling out all the stops as only it knows how.

Billie Jean King, Nadia Comaneci, Paul Simon, the star-spangled patter was relentless and breathtaking - and who wouldn't appreciate the history of Madison Square Garden and the New York Athletic Club at its 24-storey base beside Central Park?

Bid leader Dan Doctoroff talked in terms of "the single largest urban transformation in 150 years in New York" – quite an assertion when you stop to think about it and definitely not the sort of phrase you would expect to hear in Olympic-land today.

And then came the pièce de résistance: a roast beef and chickpea lunch at table with the late Richard Holbrooke, one of those rare diplomats who attained household-name status, in the Delegates' Dining Room on the fourth floor of the United Nations building.

How, I wondered, could the architect of the Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina take anything as trivial as the Olympic Games seriously?

"The Olympic Games isn't trivial," he shot back.

"I'm a big believer in the Olympics because I saw what they did for Korea.

"Whatever process got the Games to Seoul, the political effect was fantastic.

"Sport has a tremendous ability to bring people together.

"It can't always prevent a war - it didn’t stop the war in Yugoslavia after the 1984 Winter Games [in Sarajevo], but it is a tremendous way of reaching out."

Stuff like that from an individual of his stature and experience makes you stop and think.

Of course, if you were drawing up a list of core skills required by Olympic host-cities, you would not rank a peerless ability to unearth out-of-the-ordinary lunch companions for unbelievably privileged reporters as all that important.

Perhaps a boring, technocrat-led selection process is precisely what you need, given the complexities, to produce an optimal result.

But boring climaxes to hosting races are, nevertheless, a problem for the IOC - and this is why.

Olympic leaders are desperately keen for matters Olympic to remain in the public eye year-round, not just in the periods when the Games are taking place.

That is one of the reasons they launched the Olympic Channel, though I think it has a long way to go in the impossibly crowded, promiscuous new media space before achieving that sort of traction.

Those epic bid races were just sensational at keeping the Olympics in the public eye.

One definition of a massive sports story, then as now, is if it makes the front page of the Financial Times.

Well I covered that 2005 race for the FT and, let me tell you, I rarely had trouble convincing news editors of the story's merits.

The contest ensured the Movement of widespread, primarily positive, coverage around the globe for almost the entire 'down' period between the end of Athens 2004 and the countdown to Turin 2006.

It was, quite simply, the biggest running story in sport for the better part of a year, perhaps more.

What IOC President Thomas Bach and his chief lieutenants wouldn't give for the oxygen of that sort - and that volume - of publicity today.