France will not bid for the Winter Olympics in the near future until the reasons why it lost the bid for 2012 Summer Games have been analysed, French sports minister Jean-Francois Lamour said on Sunday according to Reuters. "We're not going to bid for the Olympics, be it Summer or Winter," Lamour said. "We have every reason to believe that a new bid would lead to the same result. We first need to understand why we are not understood by the members of the International Olympic Committee. "Four times is enough," he added. Paris failed three times in its bid to host the Olympics while Lille was also unsuccessful in its bid for the 2004 Games. The French capital was narrowly beaten by London in July for the organisation of the 2012 Olympics. Alpine towns like Gap, Grenoble and Annecy expressed their interest in a Winter Olympic bid but Lamour said he had persuaded them to wait. "We are still studying the reasons of our failure and I can tell you we're still at a loss to understand why," Lamour told reporters in the Olympic site of Sestriere. "Since my arrival in Turin, I have talked to some 30 or 35 IOC members and I have collected 30 or 35 different reasons why we failed," he said. Asked if their were leads into the explanation for Paris's failure, Lamour said the absence of French representatives in some major sports federations was one, while the Paris bid should have been led by a single personality "devoted 110 percent to the task" as Sebastian Coe did for the London bid. Lamour said France would not bid for the Summer Games before the 2024 Olympics but said a Winter Olympic bid at a nearer date might be considered.
