Home>News Center>Sports
       
 

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.
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.
Page: 12



Taiwan New Party chairman on mainland tour
Survivors of Japanese germ war in Jinhua
Water-splashing festival in Hangzhou
  Today's Top News     Top China News
 

After Beijing, see you in London

 

   
 

New Party chief starts mainland visit

 

   
 

Nanjing Massacre survivors found overseas

 

   
 

US targets Boeing over China technology

 

   
 

Hu arrives in Scotland for G8 summit

 

   
 

SARS vaccine trial runs smoothly to 2nd stage

 

   
  Shopping centre blast injures 47 in Liaoning
   
  China berates U.S. over Unocal vote
   
  Is China's economy ready for heatwaves
   
  Hu arrives in Scotland for G8 summit
   
  Forum unites cross-Straits officials
   
  Animals affected by the heatwave
   
 
  Go to Another Section  
 
 
  Story Tools  
   
  Related Stories  
   
Chirac, Blair face off in battle for Olympics
   
Chirac set to complete new government
   
Chirac names Iraq invasion critic P.M.
   
France braces for new prime minister, policy shift
   
President Hu meets Chirac, Putin in Moscow
   
Schroeder joins France's EU campaign
   
Chirac, Schroeder meet on EU constitution, industrial policy
  News Talk  
  It is time to prepare for Beijing - 2008  
Advertisement