Seb wants you involved in the Olympic dream (From St Helens Star)

Seb wants you involved in the Olympic dream

8:58am Thursday 2nd July 2009

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SEBASTIAN Coe visited town to promote the London 2012 Olympics and brought with him a message for the St Helens public: ‘Get involved!’

The chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympics headed to the region to witness projects that are getting thousands of youngsters playing sport.

And with the Games now only three years away, the double gold medallist was keen to emphasise he wants towns like St Helens to embrace the Olympic spirit.

Speaking to the Star's Andrew Kilmurray during a tour of the activities at St Helens Community Fire Station, Lord Coe said: “My message to the people of St Helens would be get involved.

“As the fire station is showing here it is happening and people can get involved in so many different ways.”

The 52-year-old’s passionate plea was aimed particularly at children and schools who he wants to embrace the qualities of ‘friendship, respect, courage and determination’ that underpin the Olympics.

He said he hoped pupils would learn different sports and Olympic history and as 2012 edges closer play their part in many ways, such as volunteering, in journalism and website design.

He also talked of how a school curriculum could be tailored to include the Games, adding: “In science you can teach how a sprinter runs, while in history there are great stories of Jesse Owens (the black American who won four golds in the 1936 Berlin Olympics).”

Coe, meanwhile, was impressed by what he saw down at Parr Stocks, where Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has opened the station for community sports.

He watched as cricket and football were played in street cages – portable sports enclosures that are moved around different parts of town – on the station’s car parks.

Teenage sisters Jade and Hannah Evans from Parr along with Jack Swift from Haydock demonstrated skills with a fire hose that they have learned during a youth project.

And nine-year-old Shannon Dingsdale from Billinge, among members of a junior boxing club training in the Parr gym, took a few swipes at the former middle distance runner.

Participants in the gym from St Helens Heartbeat underlined that it is also older folk that the fire service are keen to help keep fit.

Coe skirted around questions over what St Helens Council could do to ensure the town is left with a legacy from 2012.

And there are those that frown upon the vast sums being invested in the capital when many local community sports club are crying out for funding.

But the overriding message from this visit is that the Games will happen and St Helens’ involvement should stretch much further than simply watching the action unfold on television screens in three years’ time.

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