After enduring tiresome jokes for lodging one of the most uninspiring bids in Olympic history, Birmingham will have the last laugh when it plays host to the biggest stars of athletics in 2012.

Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, and US sprinting stars, including Bolt’s closest rival, Tyson Gay, will become well known to local people in the build-up to the London Games after Britain’s second-biggest city landed two of the most sought-after international teams for pre-Games training.

The US track and field team is to sign a contract today for a pre-Games training camp that Birmingham officials have claimed will deliver a return of £9 million and put the city at the centre of the excitement in the month before the opening ceremony in London.

Despite what will be tight security around the most high-profile team at the Games, US officials have promised that their stars will mingle freely, visiting local schools and athletics clubs and holding open training sessions.

The Jamaican team is expected to follow suit after two years of assiduous courting by Birmingham, involving treating Bolt’s cricket-mad brother, Sadeeki, to a bowling session at Edgbaston cricket ground and the Birmingham City Council leader popping round for coffee with Bolt’s mother on her porch in the Caribbean backwater of Trelawny.

It is payback for a city deemed too unglamorous to host the 1992 Olympics, when it was compared unfavourably with Barcelona, the eventual winner, and other rivals, including Paris and Amsterdam.

During the bid, Birmingham’s representatives underwent rude questioning by international journalists, one of whom wrote off the city as “tacky, decaying and dirty ... with nothing in the middle but fast-food joints and some really heavy freeways”.

The same American sports writer, referring to the security arrangements for athletes at the proposed Olympic site near the National Exhibition Centre, asked: “Is that because Birmingham’s so awful that you won’t dare let them out?”

Since then, however, Birmingham has established a deserved reputation for world-class sports facilities and regularly hosts international athletics events at the Alexander Stadium.

Mike Whitby, the Birmingham City Council leader, said: “We are Britain’s sports city and we cannot prove that better than by having the two best track and field teams.

“It’s nothing to do with whether we are unglamorous, and I’m sure we could have put on an Olympics, but the world is not just about London and we are more than proud to be showing what Birmingham can do.”

During a four-day tour of Jamaica this month, Mr Whitby courted politicians, business leaders and Bolt’s mother, Jennifer, with whom he claims to be on first-name terms.

“We had coffee on her porch looking out over the hillside, the coffee plantations and her plot of yams,” he recalled fondly.

“She has visited family in the [West Midlands] region and has been won over with the warmth. There is a rich relationship. There is so much of Birmingham in Jamaica and Jamaica in Birmingham.”

The council intends to build on cultural links through the city’s resident Jamaican population of more than 64,000.

It is in discussions with the Jamaican Amateur Athletic Association about a coaching exchange programme and ways to mark the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence, which will fall halfway through the 2012 Games.