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

SAINT-DENIS, France: To prove that outdoing Paris is not an impossible mission, Los Angeles rolled out Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on Sunday as the French capital took over the 2028 Olympic bid. , which ended its 2024 Games in the same way as it began – with joy and a flourish.
Paris was bringing down the curtain on the Olympics, which brought dazzling sport to the heart of the capital, breathing new life into the Olympic brand, battered by the struggles of the 2016 Rio Games and the lackluster spirit of the event in COVID-stricken Tokyo.
Even the Parisians were caught up in the Olympic spirit.
“We wanted to dream. We have Leon Marchand,” Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanget told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer, who has won four gold medals in swimming.
“Overnight, Paris became a party, and France found itself. From a country of grumblers, we have turned into a country of crazy fans.”

Following in the footsteps of Paris promises to be a challenge: it made impressive use of its cityscape at 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 feats .

But the city of Angeles showed that it also has aces up its sleeve, just like the City of Light.
Cruise — in his Ethan Hunt persona — impressed as he descended from the top of the stadium to the riffs of “Mission: Impossible” on electric guitar. As soon as his feet hit the ground — and after shaking hands with enthusiastic athletes — he took the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, secured it to the back of his motorcycle, and roared out of the arena.

The appetizing message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 also promises to be an eye-opener.
Still, it was very much a Paris night—a chance to have 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 tumultuous, star-studded show at France's national stadium that mixed unbridled celebration with a somber appeal for peace from IOC president Thomas Bach.

“It was a sensational Olympics from start to finish,” Bach said.
Announcing his intention to step down next year, Bach also struck a more somber note, calling 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's live this culture of peace every day.”
Then there was another gear change, courtesy of Cruise.
In a pre-taped segment after being rappelled live from a dizzying rooftop height, Cruise rode his bike past the Eiffel Tower, boarded a plane and then skydived over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the O's of the famous Hollywood sign to create five intertwined Olympic rings.
Thousands of athletes danced and sang the night away to cheer it on — and an Olympic-themed art show, complete with fireworks.
Their enthusiasm died down as crowds of them rushed the stage. Announcements in the stadium, in French and English, urged them to double up. Some stayed, creating an impromptu mosh pit around Grammy-winning French pop-rock band Phoenix playing before security and volunteers cleared the stage.
Across time zones, Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rapper Snoop Dogg — sporting Olympic ring pants after being a popular participant at the Paris Games — along with longtime collaborator Dr. Dre kept the party going by performing at Los Angeles' Venice Beach “.
Each is a California native, 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 Leon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swimming trunks he wore to win four gold medals, was shown on giant screens gathering the Olympic flame in the Tuileries Garden in Paris.
To loud shouts of “Leon, Leon” from the audience, Marchand reappeared at the end of the show, blowing out the fire. The games in Paris are over.
But they will return.
“I call on the youth of the whole world to gather in four years in Los Angeles,” said Bach.

205 countries, 9 thousand athletes

As the soft pink sunset gave way to night, the athletes were the first to march into the stadium, waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories — a show of global unity in a world gripped by global tension and conflict, including Ukraine and Gaza. On the screens of the stadiums there was the inscription “Together, united for peace”.
After the 329 medal events ended, an expected 9,000 athletes—many of them wearing shiny medals—and team officials filled the arena, dancing and cheering to loud 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 at the Paris Arena celebrated the occasion by singing along to Queen's anthem “We Are the Champions”. Several French athletes were crowdsurfing. Members of the American team jumped 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 celebrations that engulfed Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes were a very strong 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked an important turning point in the city's recovery after that night of terror.
At the closing ceremony, the last medals were handed out, with a piece of the Eiffel Tower embedded in each of them. In keeping with the first Olympics to aim for gender parity, they all went to women – with gold, silver and bronze medalists in the women's marathon earlier on Sunday.
The women's marathon took the place of the men's, which traditionally closed the previous Games. The switch was part of an effort in Paris to shine the Olympic spotlight more brightly on women's sporting exploits. Also in Paris, women made their debut at the 1900 Olympic Games.

Team USA once again topped the medal table with 126 medals, including 40 gold. Three were provided by gymnast Simone Biles, who made a dramatic return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health over competition in Tokyo 2021.
Unlike the rain-soaked but boisterous opening ceremony in Paris, which took place on the banks of the 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 gold-clad spider figure fell from the heavens into a dark world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols were celebrated, including the flag of Greece, home of the ancient Games, and the five intertwined Olympic rings lit up in white in the 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 for the top spot on the medal table right down to the final event.
Repeating the heartache inflicted on France by the United States in the men's basketball final, the US women's basketball side suffered a heartbreaking one-point loss to France to earn its 40th gold medal and top spot on the medal table.

As the world emerges from the COVID pandemic in 2022, Paris has promised an Olympic “light at the end of the tunnel” and will provide the stage for a carefree Games, returning 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 escalating into a wider conflict in the Middle East, and heightened security in France were approaching the start of the Games.
President of the International Committee Thomas Bach congratulated the athletes, declaring the Games closed.
“All this time you lived peacefully together 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 wars and conflicts. 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 with his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles put her Tokyo woes behind her as she made her long-awaited return to the Olympics in front of a star-studded crowd. She arrived as the most decorated gymnast in the world and left three more gold medals for her coffers.
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 will be relieved that there have been no major scandals, although it has had to contend with some controversies.
A simmering doping scandal involving Chinese athletes hangs over Olympic swimming, where the United States faces the biggest challenge to its reign in decades.
The gender appropriateness storm has hit women's boxing, revealing a toxic relationship between the IOC and the widely discredited International Boxing Association.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion cleanup of the Seine has rewarded Paris with the sight of triathlon and marathon swimmers competing in the river through central Paris without the effects of a wave of illness — even as bacteria levels have forced some training sessions to be canceled.
But despite the sporting triumph and drama, the biggest star of the show for many was the City of Light itself and the fairytale backdrop it provided for much of the competition.
“They have to set a high bar. 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. “The Next Hollywood? You can play with it.”