Cassani will call on the expert skills of another dynamic diva

London 2012: American-born business woman at the helm of Britain's Olympic voyage raises hopes as well as fears

First stop-over for the former airline chief now piloting London's Olympic odyssey will be Prague where, next weekend, she will begin the campaign to win the hearts, minds and votes of the International Olympic Committee. Barbara Cassani, whose accent is apple-pie American but whose allegiance is pie-and-mash British, attends the IOC session which will determine the destination of the 2010 Winter Games.

This in itself could be a vital factor as to whether the summer Games two years later will land in London, for if the winter event goes to favourites Vancouver it will almost certainly KO the hopes of one of London's biggest rivals, New York, and rule out a potentially dangerous bid from Toronto. It is unlikely the IOC would award successive Games to the North American continent, leaving the field clear for a three-way Euro- tussle between frontrunners London, Paris and Madrid.

Observing such complexities of Olympic politics at first hand will make a fascinating baptism for the 42-year-old Cassani but, perhaps more significantly, she will have an opportunity for a woman-to-woman chat with the first lady of Olympic bids, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki. One hopes it will be the start of a productive alliance.

No one is better equipped to formulate Cassani's Olympic education. Having led the successful bid which brought the 2004 Games back to their Grecian cradle, Angel-opoulos currently presides over the organisation of the event with the sort of verve and drive which London anticipates will be Cassani's trademark.

Cassani may have made her high-flying reputation by successfully starting, running and then selling the low-cost airline Go, but she admits she is an Olympic virgin. She will find that there is no better "card marker" in the business than Angelopoulos, who knows the IOC inside out, having wooed them and won them over, as did another female trend-setter, Evelina Christillin, a director of Juventus and member of the Agnelli family, who led the successful bid which brought a surprise win for Turin as host for the next Winter Games. The old boys of the IOC certainly seem susceptible to a bit of sex appeal.

"I am looking forward to being introduced to Mrs Angelopoulos," says Cassani. "Of course, it would be wonderful to emulate her, and I will be delighted to talk with her. She has a tremendous reputation for being very persuasive, and clearly has inside knowledge that will be useful."

The word from Angel-opoulos is that she will be pleased to meet London's champion informally and pass on any advice that may be helpful. Cassani may lack Angelopoulos's contacts and her political nous, but in many ways they are two of a kind. Both are dynamic divas in their forties with families and seriously affluent spouses; workaholics with a reputation for ruthless efficiency. Like Angelopoulos, Cassani can be effusively charming, but former colleagues say she can also be brutally brusque beneath the Bostonian schmaltz.

It is possible that the Prague tête-à-tête could lead to something even more substantial. It would not surprise me if, after the Athens Olympics, a discreet approach is made to get Angelopoulos "on board".

Clearly she would not have the time to do so now, as she has more than enough on her plate in battling to keep Athens on schedule, and it would contravene Olympic protocol to commit herself to any of the bidding cities before the 2004 Games are over. But she is very much an anglophile, and until recently had a home in London. She is also well acquainted with members of the royal family and speaks English fluently, as she does several languages.

Acquiring the support of Angelopoulos could be an invaluable asset in the concluding stages of the bid. The ground-breaking appointment of Cassani, the first foreigner to head a bid, has already raised eyebrows in IOC circles, where there is considerable surprise that a Briton could not be found to lead London's crusade. There is also the worrying aspect of the lingering anti-Iraq War climate, with both the US and Britain held in some opprobrium.

A UK bid led by an American hardly seems a vote-winning formula at this stage. Jacques Chirac must be rubbing his hands. This is just one obstacle that Cassani, described by the British Olympic Association chairman, Craig Reedie, as the "can-do" candidate, needs to overcome.

Despite her transatlantic twang and Sicilian-sounding name, Cassani insists, in the vein of a former fellow New Englander, John F Kennedy: "I am a Londoner." She even owns a pub (bought out of her £9.5m profit from the sale of Go by British Airways) near her home in Barnes, so what could be more English than that? A keen horsewoman who is married to a London banker and former triathlete, she intends to brush up on her French and Spanish, both essential IOC languages, with her priority being to ensure that London makes the cut when the bidding cities are whittled down to a realistic handful next year before the conclusive vote in Singapore in July 2005.

"I set up an airline in six months, starting with just a mobile phone, so with two years to go I am sure we can do this," she said.

To some, that may sound more like flying a kite than an airline, with London having much catching up to do. At the moment the London bid lacks not only a website but the style of Paris and the pizzazz of New York. But all the key players are convinced that the feisty Ivy Leaguer is the right person to infuse those commodities, as well as real substance. The question now is whether she can acquire corridor cred at the IOC. Fasten seat belts. It will be a bumpy ride, and a fascinating one.