A majority of Britons expect London [Images] to lose its bid for the 2012 Olympics [Images], according to a poll on the eve of an evaluation visit by Games inspectors.

Tuesday's ICM survey found 52 percent of people did not believe London could win, versus 39 percent who thought it would.

Paris is widely perceived as the front-runner.

Despite the pessimism over winning, 74 percent of the British public support hosting the Olympics, according to the poll published in The Guardian newspaper.

That, at least, will cheer London bid leader Sebastian Coe as he shows a 13-strong Olympic evaluation commission around London for four days from Wednesday on the second stop of their five-city tour.

The evaluation team, which started in Madrid, will next travel to New York, then Paris before finishing in Moscow [Images] in mid-March. The winning city will be announced on July 6.

London's position as second favourite is partly due to its high-profile bid leader Coe, twice the Olympic 1,500 metres champion and now a council member on the world governing athletics body.

However, an early International Olympic Committee (IOC) report referred to the capital's transport system as "often obsolete" and past surveys had shown Londoners to be less enthusiastic than their Parisian counterparts in supporting the bid.

The damage caused by the Picketts Lock affair -- when London won the right to host the 2005 world athletics championships only to give it back because of funding difficulties -- could also still linger in IOC minds.