At about this point in the Olympic cycle, Athens was “running out of time”. As the clock ticked down towards its big moment on the world stage, it appeared that sport's grandest theatre would, at worst, not even be built or, at best, be held together with masking tape.

A little more than four years out from the 2004 Games, the IOC was forced to bang heads together, accusing Greek ministers of overseeing the worst organisational crisis in Olympic history. Jacques Rogge, the IOC president who was chairman of the 2004 co-ordination commission at the time, gave organisers 100 days to sort out the mess. Costas Simitis, the Greek Prime Minister, sacked the head of the organising committee, and Athens eventually delivered the Games on time (just).

In London this week, as the IOC's 2012 co-ordination commission makes a similar visit to assess Olympic preparations, it all seems rather dull in comparison. There is no great panic about the construction timetable. Indeed, London Olympic organisers will start building the £496million Olympic stadium while the IOC team are in town. A well-timed, feel-good move, it is three months ahead of schedule.

The £303million aquatics centre, the showpiece venue of the 500-hectare Olympic Park in East London, has even been granted planning permission - £60million wavy roof and all - and construction will begin before the Beijing Games in August.

Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), beamed about reaching a “significant milestone”. He and his Locog colleagues can expect to be heartily praised by Denis Oswald, chairman of the IOC's 2012 co-ordination commission, for progress since June last year, the date of the previous official inspection tour.

During a series of presentations over the next three days, the IOC team will hear how advanced London is compared with previous Games. No other host city has secured so much sponsorship at this stage: Locog has raised about £300million of the £650million it needs to cover the event's operational budget even before Beijing lines up its opening ceremony fireworks.

So far, so good and plaudits will be dished out where due. But there is no such thing as a glitch-free Olympics - even the Chinese discovered that their best-laid plans could come unstuck by matters beyond their control. There are holes in the carefully scripted London story and the IOC team will seek to unpick them one by one.

They may well start with the global credit crunch. The economic picture is not as rosy as when London embarked on its Olympic venture more than two years ago. A fall in investor confidence could have serious implications for a £9.3billion public finance scheme that depends in part on private sector cash.Questions remain over funding for the Olympic Village, a key component of the Park considering it will house 17,320 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games and 8,756 at the Paralympic Games.

It is also the single biggest project on the site: an £800million public-private partnership to provide more than 3,000 houses after the Games. With tightening financial markets, Lend Lease, the Australian builder working with the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) on the project, is haggling over its liability.

If it reduces its contribution from £600million to £400million, the ODA will be forced to tap into its precious £2.7billion contingency fund. It has set aside only £492million for its share of investment in the Village and the Media Centre, another significant building on the site, but that budget could fall short.

Bricks and mortar aside, the IOC will want to hear concrete proposals for the sporting legacy so passionately promised by Lord Coe in Singapore three years ago. More of a soft commitment, it cannot be guaranteed by the Government as the lender of last resort in the way that the Olympics infrastructure can be. But it was a compelling argument for awarding the Games to London and, so far, there has been little forthcoming that amounts to a plan.

Some of the questions will be answered by Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, and Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, later in the week when they unveil Active England - a national strategy to engage more people in sport and physical activity.

The announcements, coupled with a long-overdue Olympic legacy masterplan, will be designed to convince the IOC that Britain is using the spur of the Olympics to address the yawning gap between schools sport participation and elite competition. After all, the ideal most central to Pierre de Coubertin's modern Olympic movement is the taking part. Winning the Games was not everything.