Paris Olympics memorable moments: Simone Biles was the star but the spotlight reached many faces

SAINT-DENIS, France: Proving that topping Paris is not an impossible task, Los Angeles rolled out a skydiving Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on Sunday as it took over the 2028 Olympics from the the French capital, which ended its 2024 Games just as they began – with gusto and panache.
Paris brought down the curtain on an Olympic Games that brought dazzling sport to the heart of the capital, breathing new life into an Olympic brand damaged by the difficulties of Rio de Janeiro's 2016 Games and the soulless spirit of Tokyo's covid-hit event.
Even Parisians were swept away by the Olympic fervor.
“We wanted to dream. We got Leon Marchand,” Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who won four golds in swimming.
“From one day to the next, Paris became a party and France found itself. From a country of grumblers, we became a country of frenzied fans.”

Following in Paris' footsteps promises to be a challenge: it made spectacular use of its cityscape for its first Games in 100 years, with the Eiffel Tower and other iconic monuments becoming Olympic stars in their own right as they served as backdrops and venues for medal-winning exploits .

But City of Angeles showed that it also has an ace up its sleeve, like City of Light.
Cruise – in his Ethan Hunt persona – impressed by descending from the top of the stadium to “Mission Impossible” riffs on the electric guitar. Once his feet were back on the ground — and after shaking hands with ecstatic athletes — he took the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, attached it to the back of a motorcycle and roared out of the arena.

The appetizing message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 promises to be an eye-opener too.
Still, this was very much Paris' night – its opportunity for one last party. And what a party it was.

The closing ceremony capped two and a half extraordinary weeks of Olympic sport and emotion with a raucous, star-studded show at France's national stadium, mixing unbridled celebration with a somber call for peace from IOC president Thomas Bach.

“These were sensational Olympic Games from start to finish,” Bach said.
After announcing his intention to leave office next year, Bach also struck a more somber note as he pleaded for “a culture of peace” in a war-torn world.
“We know that the Olympic Games cannot create peace, but the Olympic Games can create a culture of peace that inspires the world,” he said. “Let us live this culture of peace every day.”
Then came another gear change, courtesy of Cruise.
In a pre-recorded segment after being lowered on a rope live from the dizzying heights of the roof, Cruise rode his bike past the Eiffel Tower, onto a plane and then parachuted over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the O of the famous Hollywood sign to create five intertwined Olympic rings.
The thousands of athletes who danced and sang all night delighted it – and the artistic show that celebrated Olympic themes, complete with fireworks, flourished.
Their enthusiasm bubbled over as crowds of them rushed the stage at one point. Stadium announcements in French and English urged them to double back. Some stayed and created an impromptu mosh pit around Grammy-winning French pop rock band Phoenix as they played, before security and volunteers cleared the stage.
Several time zones away, Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rapper Snoop Dogg — wearing pants with the Olympic rings after being a popular mainstay at the Paris Games — along with longtime collaborator Dr. Dre kept the party going with performances in Los Angeles' Venice Beach.
Each is a native of California, including HER, who sang the US national anthem live at the Stade de France, packed with more than 70,000 people.

French swimmer Leon Marchand carries a lantern containing the Olympic flame with IOC President Thomas Bach, left, at the Stade de France, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP)

At the start of the show, the stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, wearing a suit and tie instead of the swimming trunks he wore to win four golds, was shown on the giant screens gathering the Olympic flame from the Tuileries in Paris.
To loud chants of “Léon, Léon” from the audience, Marchand then reappeared at the end of the show and blew out the flame. The Paris Games were over.
But they come back.
“I call upon the youth of the world to gather in four years in Los Angeles,” Bach declared.

205 countries, 9,000 athletes

As a delicate pink sunset gave way to night, athletes first marched into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories — a display of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts, including those in Ukraine and Gaza. On the stadium screens were the words “Together, United for Peace.”
As the 329 medal events concluded, the expected 9,000 athletes – many wearing their shiny medals – and team staff filled the arena, dancing and cheering to pounding beats.

Unlike in Tokyo 2021, where the Games were pushed back a year by the covid-19 pandemic and largely deprived of fans, athletes and the more than 70,000 spectators at the Paris Arena who celebrated with abandon and sang along as the Queen's anthem “We Are the Champions” blared. Several French athletes crowdsurfed. American team members jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.
The national stadium, France's largest, was one of the targets of Daesh gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on November 13, 2015. The joy and celebration that swept Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes raged. up 64 medals – 16 of them gold – marked a major watershed in the city's recovery from that night of terror.
At the closing ceremony, the final medals were awarded – each one embedded with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. Fittingly for the first Olympics to aim for gender equality, they all went to women – the gold, silver and bronze medalists from the women's marathon earlier Sunday.
The women's marathon took the place of the men's race that traditionally closed earlier games. The change was part of efforts in Paris to shine the Olympic spotlight more brightly on women's sporting achievements. Paris was also where women first made their Olympic debut, at the 1900 Games.

The American team again topped the medal table, with 126 total and 40 of them gold. Three were courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a resounding return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health over competing in Tokyo 2021.
Unlike Paris's rain-soaked but exuberant opening ceremony, which took place along the River Seine in the heart of the city, the artistic part of the closing ceremony took a more sober approach, with space-age and Olympic themes.
A golden shrouded figure fell spider-like from the sky into a darker world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols were celebrated, including the flag of Greece, the birthplace of the ancient games, and the five intertwined Olympic rings, illuminated in white in the arena where tens of thousands of lights sparkled like fireflies.

“Culture of Peace”
In the two weeks of sporting drama, China and the United States battled it out for top spot in the medal table right up to the final event.
Echoing the heartbreak the USA delivered to France in the men's basketball final, the US women's basketball side handed France a heartbreaking one-point defeat to earn a 40th gold medal and top spot on the medal table.

French President Emmanuel Macron, top, third right, and IOC President Thomas Bach greet during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics at the Stade de France, Aug. 11, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP)

As the world emerged from the covid pandemic in 2022, Paris had promised an Olympic “light at the end of the tunnel” and to set the stage for a carefree Games as they returned to Europe for the first time in over a decade.
But Russia's war in Ukraine on Europe's eastern flank, the threat of Israel's military campaign in Gaza erupting into a wider conflict in the Middle East and France's heightened security preparedness loomed as the Games began.
International Committee President Thomas Bach greeted the athletes as he declared the Games over.
“All this time you lived peacefully together under one roof in the Olympic Village. You embraced each other,” Bach said. “You respected each other, even though your countries are divided by war and conflict. You created a culture of peace.”

High level for LA
The French had a new golden boy to celebrate with swimmer March becoming king of the pool, before French judoka Teddy Riner reigned supreme as he claimed his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles put her boring Tokyo woes behind her and made a long-awaited Olympic return in front of a star-studded crowd. She came to the world's most decorated gymnast and left with three more gold medals for her trophy cabinet.
Breaking made its Olympic debut – to some derision on social media – while 3×3 basketball, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing made their other appearances.
The IOC will be relieved that no major scandals broke out, although it had to contend with some controversies.
A simmering doping scandal involving Chinese athletes hung over the Olympic swimming meet where the United States faced the biggest challenge to its reign in decades.
A storm over gender equality hit women's boxing competition and exposed the toxic relationship between the IOC and a widely discredited International Boxing Association.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion cleanup of the Seine rewarded Paris with the spectacle of triathlon and marathon swimmers racing in the river through central Paris, without a wave of illness following — though bacteria levels forced some training to be canceled.
But despite all the sporting triumph and drama, the biggest star of the program was for many the City of Light itself and the fantastic backdrop it provided to large parts of the competition.
“They have a high bar to reach. A lot of work to do, said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a Team USA T-shirt outside the Stade de France. “Hollywood next? That's something to play with.”

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