This is one of the things the Olympic Movement does best.
 

In Copenhagen’s stunning new waterfront opera house, Irena Szewinska, multi-Olympic medal-winning Polish sprinter of the 1960s and 70s poses for a photograph with Edison Arantes do Nascimento, aka Pelé, the great Brazilian footballer.

A few yards away, across tables of canapés and petits fours a high-powered Spanish delegation, including the grey-bearded King Juan Carlos, José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero, the irrepressibly bright-eyed prime minister, Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, and his star striker Raúl home in on International Olympic Committee (IOC) members such as Sergey Bubka, the former pole-vault champion, Vitaly Smirnov of Russia and Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, who is hot off the plane from a FIFA function in Brazil.
 

Somehow I don’t think they are discussing the finer points of the Danish musical evening we have just witnessed.

And of course somewhere over on the far side of what is an exceptionally spacious glassed-in foyer, Queen of Television Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama – who seems to have learnt a thing or two from Tony Blair about the fine art of fraternising with the Olympic top brass - sprinkle stardust on behalf of the Chicago bid.

Elsewhere, other IOC members, such as Princess Anne, resplendent in green, and Jacques Rogge, the IOC president himself, mill around making small talk and renewing old acquaintances with colleagues from around the world.

Be it in sport, or any other field, there is nothing quite like the post-opening ceremony party of an IOC session.

Princess Anne had good reason to feel at home: we reckoned their must have been representatives of just about every royal family in Europe in the stalls at the musical evening.

For bidding cities and their increasingly single-mnded armies of helpers and advisers, this is their last big chance to sway the electorate, to tilt those vital last couple of votes their city’s way.

But at the same time, a strict code of protocol prevails; appear too persistent or desperate and their efforts may be counter-productive.

This, though, is just the appetiser.

In a few minutes’ time, as I write this in Copenhagen’s cavernous Bella Centre, the first of the candidate city presentations – featuring Barack Obama, leader of the world’s only superpower and the ultimate political rock star – is due to start.

In ten and a half hours’ time we will know which city is to follow London as the next host of the world’s greatest sporting pageant – the Summer Olympic Games.
 

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering last year's Beijing Olympics. An archive of Owen’s material may be found by Twitter users at www.twitter.com/dodo938