ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York state and the province of Quebec have agreed to work on a joint bid to host a Winter Olympics.

New York Gov. George Pataki announced the agreement Wednesday during his State of the State speech to a joint session of the state Legislature.

Which Olympics New York and Quebec will try to attract has yet to be determined.

Sports venues around Lake Placid, site of the 1932 and '80 Winter Games, would be used, as would those near Montreal, officials said. Lake Placid and Montreal are about 140 miles apart.

If a formal bid develops, it would be the first time the United States has collaborated with another country on an Olympic bid, Pataki said.

Frederic Dube, an aide to Quebec Sports Minister Richard Legendre, said Pataki came up with the idea.

"We'll examine the idea and we welcome the proposal of Gov. Pataki's government to submit a bi-national bid,'' Dube said.

But Canadian Olympic Committee President Mike Chambers said Wednesday such a cross-border bid would be hard to pitch to the International Olympic Committee.

"There would be incredible hurdles to overcome to make this a salable concept,'' Chambers said.

Vancouver, British Columbia, is bidding for the 2010 Games, and the winner will be announced in July. Chambers said no other Canadian Winter Olympic bids would be considered in the near future if Vancouver is awarded the bid. He said there's little chance a country could win two consecutive Olympics.

"There are many other ways to spend limited resources than directing them towards bids that would have no chance of success whatsoever,'' he said.

New York City is the United States' official candidate to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Pataki selected Ronald Stafford, a former state senator and integral member of the committee that helped bring the 1980 Winter Games to Lake Placid, to lead New York's effort for the bid.

Virtually everything, starting with the structure of the organization that will develop the bid, has yet to be decided on, Stafford said.

"A great deal is going to have to be worked out, we all realize, with two countries involved,'' Stafford said. "But our borders have always worked cooperatively.''

New York and Quebec have been trying to upgrade border crossings to increase security while not hindering the movement of commercial traffic in the busy Montreal-to-New York City corridor.

Turin, Italy, will host the 2006 Games. Aside from Vancouver, Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea are finalists for the 2010 Winter Games.

Supporters of restoring Lake Placid as an Olympic site have been looking at 2014 as the first available date the Adirondack Mountain village could make a feasible bid to the International Olympic Committee.

Stafford said having Olympic venues 140 miles or more apart was done successfully during the games hosted by Albertville, France, in 1992.