The 11-strong panel, which was announced yesterday , will visit Munich, Annecy and Pyeongchang in that order between February 8 and March 5 next year.

It will then produce a report that is due to be published a month before the 122nd IOC Session in Durban on July 6, 2011, where the host city to follow Sochi will be chosen.

Cody, who has been an IPC Governing Board Member since 2005 and was chair of the IPC Education Committee from 2007 until 2009, admitted her pride at being selected to be part of the Evaluation Commission although she stated that she is fully aware of the hard work that lies ahead for her and the resent of the panel.

Cody said: "I am honored to be serving on the Evaluation Commission for the 2018 Winter Games.

"I look forward to working collaboratively with my distinguished colleagues on the Commission to fairly and objectively evaluate the efforts of the three Candidate Cities."

Cody, Director of Partnerships and Public Policy for BlazeSports America, is a Paralympic gold medalist in Athletics and competed on three US teams at Los Angeles in 1984, where she played basketball, and at Seoul in 1988 and Barceona in 1992, where she she competed in athletics.

She set a world record in 4x100 metres at the 1992 Games.

Cody also set world records in the 1500m, 3,000m and 10,000m and came in second at the 1990 and 1991 Boston Marathons.

She said: "As someone who has been on the bidding side of the process, I have a full appreciation for the responsibility and the work that lies ahead."

The 2018 Evaluation Commission will be led by IOC member Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden and includes newly-elected IOC members Angela Ruggiero of America, a four-time Olympic ice hockey medallist, as the IOC Athletes Commission representative, and Barry Maister of New Zealand, who won a gold medal in hockey at the 1976 Games in Montreal.

They will be joined by the IOC’s Swiss Executive Director for the Olympic Games Gilbert Felli, Dwight Bell of America, who representing the Association of International Olympic Winter Games Federations and Japan’s Tsunekazu Takede, a representative of the Association of National Olympic Committees.

There are also and advisers four advisers Australia’s Simon Balderstone on environment, Switzerland’s Philippe Bovy on transport, Canada’s John McLaughlin on finance and America’s Grant Thomas on infrastructure.

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