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

SAINT-DENIS, France: Determined to prove that surpassing Paris is not an impossible mission, Los Angeles on Sunday commissioned skydiver Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars as it took over hosting duties for the 2028 Olympics from the French capital . , which closed its 2024 Games just as it began – with joy and a bang.
Paris brought down the curtain on the Olympics, which brought dazzling sport to the heart of the capital, breathing new life into the Olympic brand that had been damaged by the difficulties of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the lackluster spirit of the COVID-stricken Tokyo event.
Even the Parisians got carried away by the Olympic fervor.
“We wanted to dream. We have Leon Marchand,” Paris 2024 boss Tony Estanguet told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who won four golds in swimming.
“Overnight, Paris became a party and France found itself. We went from a country of grumblers to a country of rabid fans.”

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

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

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

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

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

At the start of the show, the stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swimsuit he wore to win four golds, was shown on giant screens collecting the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.
As the audience loudly chanted “Léon, Léon”, Marchand reappeared at the end of the performance and blew out the flame. The Paris Games are over.
But they will come back.
“I call upon the youth of the world to gather in Los Angeles four years from now,” Bach declared.

205 countries, 9,000 athletes

As the soft pink sunset gave way to night, the 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. Stadium screens carried the words: “Together, United for Peace.”
With the 329 medal events completed, an expected 9,000 athletes – many with their shiny medals – and team staff filled the arena, dancing and cheering to booming beats.

Unlike Tokyo 2021, where the Games were pushed back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and largely devoid of fans, the athletes and more than 70,000 spectators in the Paris arena celebrated with abandon, singing together as Queen's anthem “We Are the Champions ,” he roared. Several French athletes crowd-surfed. Members of the US team were jumping 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 engulfed Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes stormed to 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked a major watershed in the city's recovery from that night of horror.
At the closing ceremony, the last medals were presented – each with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. Fittingly for the first Olympics to focus on gender parity, they all went to the women – gold, silver and bronze medalists from the women's marathon earlier on Sunday.
The women's marathon took the place of the men's race, which traditionally closed the previous games. The change was part of Paris' efforts to shine the Olympic spotlight more brightly on women's sporting exploits. Paris was also where women made their Olympic debut in 1900.

Team USA once again led the medal table with a total of 126 and 40 of them were gold. Three were courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a convincing return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health over competition 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 cloaked figure descended from the sky like a spider into the darkened 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 lit up white in an arena where tens of thousands of lights twinkled like fireflies.

“Culture of Peace”
In two weeks of sporting drama, China and the United States battled to top the medal table until the final event.
Responding to the pain inflicted on France by the United States in the men's basketball final, the US basketball side handed France a gut-wrenching one-point defeat to claim its 40th gold medal and first place in the medals table.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, Paris has promised an Olympic “light at the end of the tunnel” and to provide the ground for a carefree Games as they return to Europe for the first time in more than 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 posture loomed as the games began.
International Committee President Thomas Bach saluted the athletes as he declared the Games closed.
“All this time you lived together in peace under one roof in the Olympic Village. You hugged each other,” Bach said. “You have respected each other even though your countries are divided by war and conflict. You have created a culture of peace.”

High bar for LA
The French had a new golden boy to celebrate with swimmer Marchand becoming king of the pool before French judoka Teddy Riner reigned supreme as he won his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles put her liquid Tokyo woes behind her and made her long-awaited Olympic comeback in front of a star-studded crowd. She arrived as the world's most decorated gymnast and left with three more gold medals in her trophy cabinet.
Breaking made its Olympic debut – to some derision on social media – while 3×3 basketball, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing made second appearances.
The IOC is relieved that no major scandal has erupted, although it has had to deal with some controversies.
The doping scandal involving Chinese athletes hung in the balance at the Olympic swimming meets, where the United States faced the biggest challenge to its government in decades.
The storm over gender eligibility has hit women's boxing competition and exposed the toxic relationship between the IOC and the widely discredited International Boxing Association.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion cleanup of the Seine rewarded Paris with the spectacle of triathlon and marathon swimmers competing in the river through central Paris without a wave of illness — even as bacteria levels forced the cancellation of some practices.
But for all the sporting triumph and drama, the biggest star of the show for many was the city of lights itself and the fabulous backdrop that lent itself to large parts of the competition.
“They have a high bar to reach. We have a lot of work to do,” said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a Team USA shirt, outside the Stade de France. “Another Hollywood? You can play with it.”