LIGHTNING REALLY can strike twice, at least when it comes to lotto wins. Most people would assume that after one multimillion-euro win, you might not expect another.
However, a man in southern France has won the jackpot for the second time in 15 years. Furthermore, he did it by playing the same numbers.
The industrial worker from Montpellier who is in his 50s and wants to remain anonymous, first won the lottery in 1996 and took home the equivalent in francs of €2.8 million.
He kept playing the same winning numbers, spending €1,000 a month on various games. His perseverance finally paid off last month when he won a second jackpot of more than €3 million.
He said he had a “lucky star”, but whether it was in fact a star, a rabbit’s foot or a lucky shamrock, it delivered the goods.
When he was handed his first cheque by lottery bosses in 1996, they jokingly asked him to support the game by continuing to play.
This he did, investing his winnings in a variety of lotto games. He stuck with at least one sure thing, however – the same set of numbers he started with and had continued to use since the French lottery began in 1976.
“The first time I won, I nearly fainted. I went white and had trouble breathing before I really believed it,” the man told the BFMTV news channel.
“This time, I took it all a lot more calmly, but with the same joy and the same gratitude towards fate.”
He said he had invested his first winnings in business, and planned to invest the second win for his two children’s inheritance. Lucky children, it would seem.
The French lottery body, La Francais des Jeux, said there was a “one in more than a billion chance” of winning twice. Add to such odds an expectation of using the same numbers for the second win – and they stretch further still.
There have, however, been a handful of repeat lottery wins in France in the past 30 years, including one man who twice won €2.8 million in three years.
There have been no lucky stars for those playing the Irish lotto, unfortunately. A spokeswoman for the National Lottery said no one here had won the jackpot twice by using the same numbers separately.
While records were kept of the numbers drawn in each competition, there was no available analysis of whether a series of numbers had been repeated.
Whatever combination of six numbers you might choose, the chance of picking the winning numbers in the Irish lotto stand at less than eight million to one. – (Guardian service)