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

SAINT-DENIS, France: To prove that overtaking Paris is not a mission impossible, Los Angeles on Sunday lined up Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and more stars to take over from the French capital, which closed out the 2024 Games just as it began, with glee and panache, hosting the 2028 Olympics.
Paris brought down the curtain on an Olympics that brought the wildest sport to the heart of the capital, breathing new life into an Olympic brand damaged by the hardships of the 2016 Rio Games and the soulless spirit of the COVID-stricken Tokyo event.
Even the Parisians were swept away by the Olympic fervor.
“We wanted to dream. We had Leon Marchand,” Paris 2024 head Tony Estanguet told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who has won four gold medals 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 frenetic fans.”

Following in Paris’s footsteps promises to be a challenge: for the first Games in 100 years, the city has made spectacular use of its cityscape, with the Eiffel Tower and other iconic landmarks becoming Olympic stars in their own right, serving as backdrops and venues for medal-winning feats.

But the city of Angeles has proven that it too has some tricks up its sleeve, like the City of Light.
Cruise, as Ethan Hunt, wowed everyone by descending from the top of the stadium to the electric guitar riffs of “Mission Impossible.” Back on the ground, and after shaking hands with enthralled athletes, he grabbed the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, strapped it to the back of a motorcycle, and roared out of the arena.

The mouthwatering message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 also promises to be an eye-opening experience.
Yet this was largely Paris's 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 spectacle in France’s national stadium, combining wild partying 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 step down next year, Bach also struck a more somber tone, calling 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. “We live this culture of peace every single day.”
Then came another gear change, courtesy of Cruise.
In a pre-recorded segment, after being lowered live on a rope from dizzying rooftop heights, Cruise rode his bike past the Eiffel Tower, onto a plane and then skydived into the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the Os of the famous Hollywood sign to create five interlocking Olympic rings.
The thousands of athletes who danced and sang throughout the night applauded the event and the artistic show that celebrated the Olympic themes, complete with fireworks.
Their enthusiasm boiled over when a crowd of them spilled onto the stage at one point. Stadium announcements in French and English urged them to move back. Some stayed, forming 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 (who wore Olympic ring pants after being a popular mainstay at the Paris Games) and longtime collaborator Dr. Dre kept the party going with performances on Los Angeles’ Venice Beach.
Each of them is originally from California, including HER, who sang the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France, packed with more than 70,000 people.

At the start of the show, the stadium crowd cheered as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a jacket and tie instead of the swimsuit he wore to win four golds, appeared on the giant screens collecting the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.
Amid the loud chants of “Léon, Léon” from the spectators, Marchand reappeared at the end of the show, extinguishing the flame. The Paris Games were over.
But they will come back.
“I invite the youth of the world to come together in four years in Los Angeles,” Bach said.

205 countries, 9,000 athletes

As a soft pink sunset gave way to night, the athletes marched first into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories, a show of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts, including in Ukraine and Gaza. Screens around the stadium displayed the words “Together, United for Peace.”
Once the 329 medal-winning events were concluded, the 9,000 expected athletes (many with their shiny medals) and team staff members filled the arena, dancing and cheering to the music.

Unlike Tokyo in 2021, where the Games were postponed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and largely devoid of fans, the athletes and more than 70,000 spectators in the Paris arena celebrated lightheartedly, singing along as Queen’s anthem “We Are the Champions” blared. Many French athletes went crowd-surfing. Members of the U.S. team jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.
The national stadium, the largest in France, 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 amassed 64 medals, 16 of them gold, marked a major turning point in the city's recovery from that night of terror.
The closing ceremony saw the awarding of the last medals, each inlaid with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. As befits the first Olympics aimed at gender equality, they all went to women: the gold, silver and bronze medals from the women's marathon on Sunday morning.
The women's marathon replaced the men's event that traditionally closed previous Games. The change was part of Paris's efforts to shine a greater Olympic spotlight on women's athletic achievements. Paris was also where women made their Olympic debut, at the 1900 Games.

The U.S. team is once again atop the medal count, with 126 overall, 40 of them gold. Three of them came courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a sensational return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health over competing in Tokyo in 2021.
Unlike the opening ceremony in Paris, which took place along the Seine in the heart of the city in the rain but with great enthusiasm, the artistic part of the closing ceremony took a more sober approach, with space and Olympic themes.
A figure wrapped in a golden cloak fell like a spider from the sky into a dark world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols were celebrated, including the flag of Greece, birthplace of the ancient Games, and the five intertwined Olympic rings, lit up in white in the arena where tens of thousands of lights sparkled like fireflies.

'Culture of Peace'
The two-week sporting spectacle saw China and the United States battle it out for first place in the medal table until the last event.
Echoing the pain inflicted on France by the United States in the men's basketball final, the U.S. women's basketball team inflicted a heartbreaking one-point defeat on France to earn their 40th gold medal and first place in the medal table.

As the world emerged from the COVID pandemic in 2022, Paris promised an Olympic “light at the end of the tunnel” and a stage 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 that Israel's military campaign in Gaza could spill over into a wider conflict in the Middle East, and a growing state of security alert in France loomed as the Games began.
International Committee President Thomas Bach greeted the athletes and declared the Games concluded.
“During all this time, you lived peacefully together under the same roof in the Olympic Village. You embraced each other,” Bach said. “You respected each other, even though your countries were divided by wars and conflicts. You created a culture of peace.”

The bar is high for Los Angeles
The French had a new champion to celebrate as swimmer Marchand emerged as king of the pool, before French judoka Teddy Riner reigned supreme, winning his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles left her torturous Tokyo misery behind, making a long-awaited Olympic return in front of a star-studded crowd. She arrived as the world's most decorated gymnast and left with three more gold medals for her trophy cabinet.
Breakdancing made its Olympic debut, amid some derision on social media, while 3×3 basketball, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing made their second appearances.
The IOC will be relieved that no major scandals have erupted, even though it has had to deal with some controversies.
A doping controversy involving Chinese athletes has been hanging over the Olympic swimming competition, where the United States has faced the biggest challenge to its dominance in decades.
A gender eligibility storm has engulfed women's boxing competition, exposing toxic relations between the IOC and a widely discredited International Boxing Association.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion cleanup of the Seine has rewarded Paris with the sight of triathlon swimmers and marathon runners racing in the river through central Paris, without triggering a wave of illnesses, although bacteria levels have forced the cancellation of some workouts.
But for all the triumphs and sporting highlights, for many the biggest star of the show was the City of Lights itself and the stunning backdrop it provided for much of the competition.
“They have a very high bar to reach. There's a lot of work to be done,” said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a Team USA jersey outside the Stade de France. “Hollywood is next? That's something to play with.”