Chris Hespe, the head of Sport, Leisure and Olympics at Kent County Council, claimed that with several training venues across Dartford and Gravesend, where overseas team will prepare for their events, and excellent transport links North Kent is in prime position to benefit.

He said: "This is a huge opportunity for the whole of North Kent to promote itself to a global audience and that has got enormous benefits in terms of tourism and inward investment into the area.

"It will do amazing things for the Thames Gateway area by raising awareness worldwide.

"You are talking about enormous international exposure.

"It is estimated that Kent will benefit from £324million in tourism spending between 2008 and 2016 as a direct result of the Games."

Chaired by Hespe and launched in May 2007, the Kent Coordinating Group for the 2012 Games is a multi-agency partnership tasked with making the most of the opportunities presented by the Olympics.

Hespe said: "This is something that is not going to come again this lifetime.

"People will remember it for the rest of their lives and it is literally going to be held on North Kent's doorstep.

"There are obviously lots of benefits from having the Games so close.

"We want the Games to be used as a catalyst to achieve Kent's ambitions better and sooner."

The £100 million Ebbsfleet International Station will also be playing a large part in North Kent's role in the Olympics.

With the state-of-the-art high speed Olympic Javelin connections taking spectators to the Olympic site in Stratford in less than 10 minutes the Station is expected to be a key transport hub.

Hespe said: "There will be more than 20,000 accredited media and 20,000 non-accredited media coming to the Games.

"Many will be from poorer nations and won't be able to afford London prices so we want them to stay in Kent and use Ebbsfleet International Station to travel to the Games."

Hespe hopes the Games will bring more top class sporting event to the county.

He said: "We have had the Tour de France in Kent, we had the UK Paracyling Championships a couple of weeks ago and the archery World Cup in 2007 and are hoping to attract more major events to Kent."

Kent have already invited Nepal's Olympic team to base themselves there in the build-up to London 2012 and hope to attract more squads.

Hespe said "Last year the ladies gymnastics team from the Ukraine visited MEAPA gym in Gravesend and trained alongside all of the kids.

"It's so inspirational for those kids.

"The majority of them know they are not going to end up performing for Team GB but they learnt that to do anything in life well and reach the top you have got to work hard.

"You can't put a price on that type of lesson so having nations train in Kent is going to really important.

"There will be a feeling of the community being engaged in the Games if a team trains with the locality and we want to build on the back of nations training here with long-term sporting, educational and cultural exchanges.

"What we want to do is inspire people into new activity whether it's sport, the arts or volunteering, to try new things and for people to do things better than ever before."