Absolutely, there is an art to the way the International Olympic Committee drafts reports such as the one it made public Wednesday evaluating the four cities in the hunt for the 2016 Summer Games.

It’s not just what the report says, it’s how it says it and, almost important, what it doesn’t say.

Thus there’s an art as well to reading between the lines of these things, which is why Rio de Janeiro emerged as the report’s clear winner, the report not only buying into the Brazilian vision of the bid as catalytic force but reciting the “potential power of the Games to transform a city, a region and a country.”

There are no out-and-out losers in such reports because, as the IOC has emphasized time and again over the past year, all four finalists in the 2016 race are eminently capable of staging the Games.

Then again, in Tokyo, it “became apparent to the commission that a number of venues listed as existing would in fact need to be built.” Moreover, Tokyo’s Olympic village would be located in “close proximity” to a major fish market, the report citing concerns about “traffic flow and noise,” IOC politesse demanding no mention what it might smell like to live near such a market in the summer. Some things the IOC deems best left to one’s vivid imagination.

Chicago, predictably, got dinged for a variety of issues, all susceptible to solution before the IOC’s Oct. 2 vote for 2016 in Copenhagen, indeed probably on the way to being solved. An example: Can Mayor Richard M. Daley can sign the standard IOC host-city contract as is? Four years ago, the last-minute haggling over the fine points of the contract helped bury New York’s 2012 chances. Daley is expected next week, however, to get City Council approval to sign.

“We feel very good about the report,” Chicago bid leader Pat Ryan said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got most of it resolved and we’re days away from having it all resolved.”

And Madrid, perhaps the stealth candidate in the race, was described for the most part in glowing terms but criticized for a management-related issue that one charismatic figure could solve in virtually no time — a 2009 Spanish version of the role Peter Ueberroth played in advancing the 1984 Los Angeles Games, if you will.

“Anything they said is something that can be corrected,” Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., a senior bid official, said Wednesday by phone.

All of this might matter significantly in advance of the Oct. 2 vote in Copenhagen at which the IOC will make its 2016 pick but for three far more salient factors:

First, the report is in a significant respect already too late. The evaluation commission made the rounds of the four cities in April and May. In June, most of the roughly 100 or so members of the IOC convened at the IOC’s base, Lausanne, Switzerland, for what amounted to a bid-city convention. This report could and should have been produced by then; it was not.

Second, because the report deals entirely in shades of gray — again, the finesse in both the production and the anticipated reading of it — it does not yield rankings. It does not even provide clearly articulated guidance and advice. It needs to be far more black and white, far more concrete in analysis and summary.

Why? The IOC, in the aftermath 10 years ago of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, banned visits by the members to the cities and, in part, adopted a process by which the so-called technical details — matters such as security, transport, hotels and so forth — would be reviewed in the kind of report issued Wednesday. If the IOC intends to stay with the no-visits policy, such an evaluation report must be more on point.

Third, because the report has traditionally proven so unhelpful — and, at that, lengthy — most of the members don’t read it.

And so they probably won’t read this one, either.

Which is too bad. It contains, and particularly when seen in the context of IOC bid history, an abundance of rich nuggets.

For instance, consider the analysis the IOC produced last year, in a first take on the would-be 2016 cities, on perhaps the most sensitive issue confronting Rio as it bids to become the first city from South America to stage the Games in the history of the modern Olympics:

“Crime in parts of Rio de Janeiro was considered to be an issue for the safety of people attending the Olympic Games. Should Rio be selected … assurances regarding protection and safety of persons traveling through certain parts of the city would be required.”

Now the report Wednesday:

“Rio de Janeiro recognizes that it faces safety challenges and is undertaking an ambitious project to enhance the resources, technology and training of its police force by 2012,” adding in the very next paragraph that bid leaders and law enforcement officials had offered a “comprehensive presentation” that showed “how increased public safety and reductions in crime have been achieved in Rio in recent years.”

That’s a striking difference.

Indeed, the pronounced differentiation in language within the new report’s description of Rio on the one hand and the other three cities on the other jumped off the pages Wednesday to close readers.

An overall effort for Rio’s bid leaders has been to erase a generalized concern that it’s possible there. The IOC made plain Wednesday it’s for sure possible.

“It is fair to say that Rio has a very positive report and possibly the most favorable of all,” bid leader Carlos Nuzman said in a telephone interview.

It is also fair to say, however, that the more one advances in politics the sharper ought to be the scrutiny.

If the IOC isn’t going to do it — ok, here goes, with questions that may not yield immediate answers but are the sort that ought to animate debate over serious consideration of Rio, because Rio deserves to be considered seriously:

The Rio plan calls for 8,500 rooms to be made available on cruise ships and 1,700 in so-called “apartment hotels.” But, as the report noted, the cruise-ship bookings can’t be guaranteed now, and each “apartment-hotel” is individually owned. Meanwhile, 60 percent of the hotels that have given price guarantees “have included a renegotiation clause in regard to rates.” How workable, really, are these facets of the accommodation plan?

Rio’s capital investment budget totals $11.1 billion. What are the odds that figure might swell significantly, as capital investment totals did in Athens in 2004, in China in 2008 and as has proven the case as well with preparations for London in 2012?

Would going to Rio produce a scenario more like China in 2008 (capital budget believed to be north of $40 billion but absolutely done way ahead of time) or Greece in 2004 (immense cost overruns, mad dash to the finish)? If it’s more like Athens — does the IOC want in on that, again and so soon?

The plans call for five “extensive” transport infrastructure upgrades. Rio’s airport, for instance, would be built out to improve capacity from 15 million to 25 million by 2014 and the World Cup that year in Brazil. Then there are more than 40 miles of special “bus rapid transit” corridors, a system described in the report as “critical to Games operations.” Is each piece, and all of it, do-able?

Moreover, the report Wednesday noted that the airport in Sao Paolo would “also be an international gateway to the Games, with transfers to Rio being facilitated for the Olympic family and international spectators.” Wait. To get to Rio for the Olympics, the members of the so-called “Olympic family” might well have to make a pit stop in Sao Paolo first? What do you mean, you can’t even get there directly? How might that be received on the floor in Copenhagen before the vote?

The report expressed “some concern” about the ability of Olympic sponsors to “fully activate their programs in Brazil … given the marketing activity surrounding the 2014 FIFA World Cup.” Some concern? It’s seven years from the election of an Olympic host city until the opening ceremony. The central thrust of Rio’s plan is to accentuate the purportedly transformative power of the Olympics. But for five of the seven years before 2016, isn’t there a risk the spotlight would be brighter on the World Cup in soccer-crazed Brazil?

Finally, there’s this, and it’s not in the report but it is elemental. Brazil’s charismatic president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is a huge booster; under his leadership, the bid has become a priority federal project. Lula is done as president when his second term expires, at the end of 2010.

Then what?

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