Paris Olympics failure is new blow for Chirac
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-07 10:04

PARIS, July 6 (Reuters) - Paris's defeat by London in the race to host the 2012 Olympic Games was a bitter blow for French President Jacques Chirac that was all the more painful because he lost out again to his rival Tony Blair.

French President Jacques Chirac holds up his hand on arrival at Gleneagles Hotel for the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, July 6, 2005. [Reuters]

Chirac badly needed a victory to lift his political fortunes and give the economy a tonic after two defeats in Europe, which left him sorely wounded, and an embarrassing furore over comments attributed to him criticising British food.

The British prime minister not only emerged as the winner in what was billed as another showdown with Chirac following a row at a European Union summit last month, but he did so with the flair normally attributed to the French.

"Tony Blair acted brilliantly. He has a dynamism which makes him win all his bets, win all the gambles he takes and win all the challenges he sets himself," said Pierre Durand, an Olympic gold medallist in equestrianism for France in 1988.

"They have the luck to have a prime minister who is young, emblematic, charismatic, deliberately looking to the future and

at odds with 'Old Europe'. You can feel it on every level."

How galling such comments must be to Chirac, who failed in his own gamble of going to Singapore at the last minute to lobby members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

How unfortunate for Chirac that his flight from Singapore takes him only as far as Scotland where the 52-year-old Blair will be his host at an eight-nation summit -- and the cooking will be British.

Liberation newspaper said Chirac cracked jokes to Russian and German leaders about bad British food on Sunday. "You can't trust people who cook as badly as that," it cited him as saying.

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