Olympics 2012

Ooooh, sour grapes don't make good wine but they do make a good whine...


Paris Olympics failure is a blow for Chirac
Wed Jul 6, 2005 7:16 PM BST

By Timothy Heritage

PARIS (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.

Chirac badly needed a victory to lift his political fortunes after a French "No" vote on the European constitution that left him sorely wounded and a furore over comments attributed to him criticising British food.

The 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 took 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.

Newspaper Liberation 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.

CHIRAC OFFERS CONGRATULATIONS

"I am of course, like all French people, disappointed by this decision," Chirac told reporters on arrival in Scotland, where he said he would have the chance to pass on "warm and personal congratulations" to Blair and Queen Elizabeth.

Chirac, 72, had hoped that securing the Olympics would have lifted the sagging confidence of French voters and given a boost to the sluggish economy by creating jobs and generating revenues for tourism, construction and the service sector in general.

Critics speak of a "fin de regne" (end of reign) after Chirac's 10 years as president. His hopes of winning or even running in the next presidential election in 2007 are now slim.

Chirac's popularity has dropped since French voters rejected the EU's constitution on May 29 -- partly out of discontent with his policies -- and he suffered a new blow late last month when a row with Blair meant the EU did not agree a long-term budget.

Chirac labelled Blair's stance "pathetic" at the EU summit after Blair said he would make concessions on Britain's budget rebate from the EU only if the bloc agreed to a wider review of spending, including the hefty subsidies French farmers receive.

The two men also took opposing positions over the U.S.-led Iraq war, in which Blair was U.S. President George W. Bush's staunchest ally while Chirac led resistance to the invasion.

Chirac has little to encourage him on the economic front because growth is slow and the unemployment rate is at a five-year high of 10.2 percent. Opinion polls show many French centre-right voters would also prefer Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to be the conservatives' presidential candidate in 2007.

"What is certain is that there is a feeling of a France that doubts itself, and this vote will accentuate it," said political analyst Pascal Boniface.

"Bizarrely, one would not ask questions about a British decline if Paris had won and London were second."