LORD Sebastian Coe encouraged Weymouth and Portland residents to grasp the opportunities offered by the 2012 Olympic Games on his visit to the borough.

The chairman of the London Organising Committee praised the ‘excellent Sailing waters’ for providing a ‘massive’ role in helping the capital to secure the bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Speaking from the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, Lord Coe took a break from his whistle-stop tour to take part in a question and answer session with Dorset Echo reporter Laura Kitching.

Thank you for supporting the Dorset Echo’s Going for Gold campaign.

Lord Coe: I’m well aware of it, I wrote a piece for it.

A lot of residents haven’t been so happy about the roadworks and the Nothe being ticketed, when it’s usually public gardens. Why should they get excited?

Lord Coe: Well it’s a fantastic opportunity, if you see the faces of the local children here who are learning to sail in a world-class centre and it is a world-class centre now, attracting people from all over the world. Weymouth and Portland has always had a great reputation for sailing but now this is an Olympic reputation and believe me that’s of a completely different order.

There are seven different countries basing themselves here at the sailing academy, another cluster of countries are basing themselves in the area and all this will be a really strong local legacy going forward, particularly at a time when your traditional seaside type economies are having to look at other ways to promote themselves.

A large chunk of tourism here is now activity-based holidays and all that will be helpful.

There’s a new Olympic village that again will be very helpful after the Games and many of the transport infrastructure changes were brought forward in programme because of the Olympic Games so you can see some real positives.

But I don’t remotely dismiss local concerns. We work very closely with all the local communities and that’s why I think the Games over the long haul are a massive advantage.

If you speak to sailing communities anywhere in the world and if you speak to those sailing communities that weren’t successful – the French, Madrid, Moscow, New York – they know what they lost.

Why should people buy tickets to go to the Nothe to watch sailing on a screen when it’s a public gardens they wouldn’t have normally had to pay for?

Lord Coe: Firstly, because the Games is different. Secondly, for operational reasons it’s really important that we’re able to control that area for all sorts of reasons – for health and safety, for crowd numbers.

And also remember we’re also wanting communities who may not understand that much about sailing to understand more about it through the way that we present the sport and by presenting it on big screens and explaining properly what’s going on on the water, that’s all part of it.

We’ve extensively, exhaustively consulted for two years with local communities and we think ticketing for all sorts of reasons is the right way to go about it.

The International Federation for Sailing of course was very pleased with that as well.

As a former Olympian, how does the Olympics change people’s lives?

Lord Coe: Massively, I wouldn’t be standing here today had the Olympics not changed my life. I’ve been involved with the Olympic movement but more importantly it was the Olympic movement that attracted me into sport.

When I spoke to any number of those young children who were on their Sail for a Fiver scheme it’s the Olympic Games that’s got them focused on the importance and values of sport and that’s a very strong part of the legacy.

We haven’t always been very successful in getting young people into sport, the Olympic Games will be for the foreseeable future our best opportunity to do that.

Tell me about the importance of Weymouth and Portland’s role in the Games.

Lord Coe: Weymouth and Portland is a fantastic centre for excellent sailing, when we started bidding it was the one venue the International Federation instantly understood, many of them had sailed here before or held championships here before and it was one of the easiest sales.

As soon as we said Weymouth and Portland they really understood the international quality of the sailing we were offering.

It made a massive difference to the bid.