Paris failure cannot hang over us - Annecy bid chief Edgar Grospiron

The trauma from Paris's shock defeat to London in the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games must not be allowed to hang over the French bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the Annecy bid chief Edgar Grospiron told AFP.

More hope

The 42-year-old 1992 Olympic gold medalist in the moguls in Albertville - who has lived in Annecy since he was nine years old - said that the French were a proud people and should take pride in their bid.

"I think the failure of the Paris bid gives us more hope than it raises bad memories," Grospiron told AFP by phone.

"I said last week to a group of French people that we cannot linger on the failure.

"The French people are a proud people and we also need that pride to be invested in a new candidature.

"We have to continue the Olympic history in France and write new pages in the book.

"First of all there is a new ambition to this bid and second of all we should be proud of the bid."

Grospiron, who also took bronze at the 1994 Olympics, said that the bid had listened to the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee after they emerged third behind the other two candidates Korean resort Pyeongchang, running for the third successive time, and Munich in a technical report. In it they were criticised for not having a compact enough plan for the venues, French Olympic legend and IOC member Jean-Claude Killy had advised the local politicians to put forward as compact a proposal as possible but his advice fell on deaf ears.

Back on board

Grospiron, though, says that Killy - a close family friend - was back on board following his own appointment and that his advice had at last been put into effect resulting in the more compact plan of the venues and conceded that there were risks involved.

"We need to be more flexible and take the view that we need to adapt to the Olympics and not take the attitude of making the Olympics adapt to our region," said Grospiron, who is due later this week to fly to Acapulco to address American National Olympic Committees.

"We have taken risks working on Chamonix and Annecy without having a plan B, which was a risk but we wanted to take those risks.

"You can't win unless you take risks. We have gone as far as possible to concentrate the venues and on the ground it works very well.

New concentration

"Of course these changes didn't come from our own initiative but we were flexible enough to bring a new concentration to the venues and to be very adaptable.

"We are after all in a partnership with the IOC, the National Olympic Committees (NOC) and the International Federations (IF) and that is not just till 2018 but afterwards as well."

Stiff people

Grospiron, who is now a sought after motivational speaker having gone to the United States to learn the art of doing so, said that he and his bid had to be good listeners and not take offence easily - things which did not come easily to the Paris bid and cost them dearly ultimately.

"You cannot work with stiff people and also those who don't listen to their partners points of view," said Grospiron.

"If you don't work together it's just not possible to make something succeed. The review of the venues was an example and showed we can listen and adapt.

"One of our characteristics is to listen to advice and to progress and to get better and better."

Grospiron, who says he opted for moguls instead of alpine skiing because he didn't find racing against the clock as exciting as his preferred option which revolves round 25percent chrono and the rest on the opinion of the judges, make no bones about what leading the bid to a successful conclusion means to him. PARIS, AFP