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Hi, I'm Richard, Project Sponsor for the Sailing venue at Weymouth and Portland. This is the
first completed ODA venue and I'd like to take you for a quick tour.
Part of the real success of this project has been the regeneration of the area. The Navy
moved out of here at the end of the 90s which was a real blow to the local economy and then
there has been a gradual development of this since then, but the Olympics has really been
the catalyst to take that forward, so we've not only enhanced the academy, but there's
commercial development that has been bought along as well.
So the new world-class facilities we created here include new cranes to lift the boats
in and out of the water, slipways to launch the boats in all tidal conditions and then
mooring pontoons for up to 70 boats.
This is part of the new ODA works. Six months ago this was all water, since then this area's
been reclaimed, we've used 80,000 tons of local Portland stone to form a new boat parking
area used by the academy both leading up to the Games and then also for the Games themselves,
this is where the competitors and officials will be based before going out onto the water
to race.
The facilities are open to anybody, whether you're here trying to learn to sail or you're
here trying to win an Olympic gold. That is just a fantastic opportunity for kids all
around the region and almost all around the country that they can come down here, they
can go sailing, they can see what it's like living the Olympic lifestyle and I think that's
just going to be inspiration for all of them.
So not only do we have some of the finest sailing waters in northern Europe, but we've
now added the venue to enable our Olympic and Paralympic sailors to hit peak performance
in 2012.