LONDON —  Perhaps the cruelest paradox of Mitt Romney’s overseas debut —  in which he prompted a news media frenzy by casting doubt on Britain’s Olympic preparedness —  is that no one loves the Olympics more than Mr. Romney.


He talks about the Olympics frequently on the campaign trail. He ran the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, and has attended all the Games for the past decade. He insisted on heading abroad for this year’s opening ceremony, against the advice of some aides who worried about leaving the country in the middle of such a heated presidential election.


So what could account for his candid statement that he found the state of some of London’s preparations “disconcerting”? Mr. Romney has misspoken before, despite his highly disciplined, analytical and cautious campaign. But it may be the very consultant-cool personality of his campaign that has helped propel Mr. Romney’s Olympic-size gaffe.


Throughout the election cycle, Mr. Romney’s team has tried to build a low-risk campaign — refusing to release more than two years’ tax returns, holding infrequent news conferences, limiting the national news media’s access to him and now planning a foreign trip whose first stop included few public events.


The result is a campaign that, rather than making news and controlling the script, often finds itself scrambling to catch up.


Mr. Romney’s caution and hesitancy have a personal history. He watched the presidential hopes of his father, George W. Romney, then the governor of Michigan, implode after an offhand remark about having been “brainwashed” in Vietnam.


And Mr. Romney is further hemmed in overseas. As a matter of unspoken protocol, he cannot take his usual swipes at President Obama, and he has made the choice, as he said again on Thursday, not to “describe foreign policy positions I might have while I’m on foreign soil.”


But for all of Mr. Romney’s precautions, he did not refrain from all criticism abroad.


The aftermath was swift and vicious, with the British press devouring Mr. Romney like a pile of mushy peas. His campaign was slow and flat-footed in recognizing it had a problem, and unable to improvise a quick response.


Instead, staff members were forced to watch as David Cameron, the British prime minister, offered a tart and public rebuke on Thursday. “Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere,” Mr. Cameron said, an obvious allusion to the Games Mr. Romney oversaw in Salt Lake City.


Afterward, the campaign said that Mr. Romney had misspoken because he was tired and jet-lagged. “Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries once in a while,” said an adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a delicate topic.


But the situation was magnified by the schedule. On Friday, Mr. Romney attended the Olympics opening ceremony, but held no public events, except an appearance on the “Today” show, where he tried to walk back his original comments. On Thursday, his day was full of photo opportunities rather than moments for actual news-making.


(A similar situation occurred during the Republican primaries, at Ford Field in Detroit. The Romney campaign, after promising a major policy address, failed to unveil much new policy, and the prevailing story line became Mr. Romney’s inability to fill the cavernous football stadium.)


Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign staff members, meanwhile, capitalized on Mr. Romney’s rough day by expressing their “utmost confidence” in Britain’s Olympic preparedness and unveiling their own news Friday that the president was releasing an additional $70 million in military aid for Israel, another stop on Mr. Romney’s itinerary.


In an effort to provide a more substantive story line, the Romney campaign gave an impromptu background briefing late Thursday with a senior policy adviser in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where Mr. Romney was attending a closed fund-raiser.


That could not overcome the Olympics remark. Two U.S. television networks led with the gaffe on their nightly broadcasts (a third ran it second), and Mr. Romney awoke to British headlines proclaiming him a “party-pooper” and “Mitt the Twit.”


Though Britain had a field day with Mr. Romney’s comment, it remains to be seen whether they will have any impact on voters in the United States. But so far, the images and moments from the Olympics cannot be quite what the Romney campaign had been hoping for.