MANCHESTER is ahead of London for sporting facilities, says 2012 Olympic Games' supremo Lord Coe.

Lord Coe, the double Olympic champion credited with landing the games for London, said sports facilities in some northern cities were `30 years ahead of London, making the capital a poor relation.

Lord Coe also said the London Games would be a massive economic, cultural and sporting boost for the north west.

When it was suggested many northerners would struggle to view the capital as a poor relation in sporting facilities, he said: "You have any number of facilities that most Londoners would give their right arms for. I talk as a proud northerner, if you like, because Sheffield was my home town. One thing I know is that Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool have had sports strategies and facilities they have built which are 30 years ahead of what we have in London."

He described Manchester's aquatics centre, velodrome and the City of Manchester stadium as `the most extraordinary facilities for elite-level athletes'.

Lord Coe, who is chairman of the London 2012 Olympic Games organising committee, said: "We have used the Olympic games as a catalyst to support those very, very hard-pressed communities in London that have not had the benefit of facilities cities in the north have had."

He said there were no competitors from London at the recent world swimming championships.

He insisted the London Olympics is a huge financial, cultural and sporting boost for the north west.

He said tourism and business is likely to boom, with at least one major contract already won by a Greater Manchester company and many more set to follow. Olympic teams would hold pre-games training camps here with athletes using facilities like Manchester's velodrome and aquatics centre as well as 71 other venues in the north west to prepare for the Games, he said.

He said Old Trafford would host some games in the football competition, adding people from the regions, especially youngsters, who wanted to get to the athletics in London or other events held there may benefit from subsidised rail fares. But he brushed aside suggestions it was folly to build another velodrome in London when Manchester already had a world-class facility.

Lord Coe said: "I would turn that on its head. It would be like London hosting the Commonwealth Games and building a new velodrome and saying `what's the point in Manchester having one when there's already one in London?'

"Here in London we don't have swimming facilities worthy of the name. We don't have international track and field facilities. We don't have world-class cycling facilities. That's for a population of nine million people.

"What we are striving for in London many of our great northern cities have been very familiar with for more than 30 years."

He pointed out the steel being used to build the new Olympic stadium was being provided by a Bolton firm.

A new business network had been launched at Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium to provide a forum where more local businesses could reap rewards from the London Games.