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

SAINT-DENIS, France — In a bid to prove that beating Paris is not an impossible task, Los Angeles welcomed a skydiving Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on Sunday as it took over hosting duties for the 2028 Olympic Games from the French capital, which ended the 2024 Games just as it began — with joy and brilliance.
Paris brought the curtain down on an Olympic Games that brought the spectacle of sport to the heart of the capital, giving new life to an Olympic brand battered by the difficulties of Rio de Janeiro 2016 and the soulless spirit of the Covid-hit Tokyo event.
Even the Parisians were impressed by the Olympic enthusiasm.
“We wanted to dream. And we got Leon Marchand,” Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 Olympics organising committee, told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who has won four gold medals in swimming.
“From one day to the next, Paris has become a place of celebration, and France has found itself. From a country of complainers, we have become a country of passionate fans.”

Following in Paris's footsteps would seem a challenge: the city was used to spectacular effect for its first Games in a century, 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 Angeles City has shown that it also has trump cards up its sleeve, like the City of Light.
Cruise wowed the crowd as Ethan Hunt, rappelling down from the top of the stadium to the tune of “Mission: Impossible” on an electric guitar. Once back on his feet, and after shaking hands with the amazed athletes, he took the Olympic flag from famous gymnast Simone Biles, attached it to the back of a motorcycle, and then exited the stadium.

The message that whetted the appetite was clear: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics were also expected to be a surprise.
However, this was very much a Paris night – a chance to have one last party. And what a party it was.

The closing ceremony capped off an extraordinary two-and-a-half weeks of Olympic sporting and emotional events with a star-studded spectacle at the Stade National de France, mixing wild celebration with a somber call for peace from International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

“These Olympic Games were exciting from start to finish,” Bach said.
After announcing his intention to step down next year, Bach struck a more somber tone when he called 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. Let us live this culture of peace every day,” he said.
Then came another gear change, courtesy of Cruz.
In a pre-recorded clip, after being lowered on a rope from the top of the building, Cruise rode his bicycle past the Eiffel Tower, climbed into a plane, and then skydived over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the letter O of the famous Hollywood sign to create five interlocking Olympic rings.
Thousands of athletes danced, sang and cheered the night away as the show celebrated Olympic themes, complete with fireworks displays.
Their excitement grew when crowds of them rushed the stage at one point. Stadium announcements in French and English urged them to hold back. Some stayed, creating an impromptu hype around Grammy-winning French 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 pants bearing the Olympic rings after being a popular fixture at the Paris Games — and longtime collaborator Dr. Dre continued the party with performances on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
Each of them are California natives, including HER, who sang the American national anthem live at the Stade de France, which was packed with more than 70,000 people.

At the start of the show, the stadium crowd cheered as French swimmer Leon Marchand, wearing a suit and tie instead of the swimsuit he wore to win four gold medals, appeared on the giant screens bringing the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.
To the loud cheers of the crowd, “Lyon, Leon,” Marchand reappeared at the end of the show and extinguished the flame. The Paris Games were over.
But they will come back.
“I call on the youth of the world to gather four years from now in Los Angeles,” Bach said.

205 countries and 9000 athletes

As the sun set in a soft pink, the athletes entered the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories – a show of global unity in a world gripped by tensions and global conflicts, including in Ukraine and Gaza. The stadium screens read: “Together, United for Peace.”
As the 329 medal events concluded, the arena was filled with the expected 9,000 athletes – many wearing their shiny medals – and team staff, dancing and cheering to the music.

Unlike in Tokyo in 2021, where the Games were postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and largely devoid of fans, athletes and more than 70,000 spectators celebrated freely in the Paris Arena, singing along as Queen’s anthem “We Are the Champions” blared. Several French athletes joined in the surf. 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 ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on November 13, 2015. The joy and celebrations that swept through Paris during the Games, as Marchand and other French athletes won 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked a major turning point in the city’s recovery from that night of horror.
The closing ceremony saw the final medals handed out, each encrusted with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. As is fitting for the first Olympics to achieve gender parity, all the medals went to women, who won gold, silver and bronze in the women's marathon earlier on Sunday.
The women's marathon replaced the men's race that had concluded previous Olympic Games. The change was part of an effort in Paris to highlight women's athletic achievements. Paris was also the city where women first appeared at the Olympic Games in 1900.

The United States once again led the medal table with 126 medals, including 40 gold. Three of the medals came courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a strong return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health over competing in Tokyo 2021.
In contrast to the rain-soaked but joyful opening ceremony in Paris, which took place on the banks of the River Seine in the heart of the city, the artistic part of the closing ceremony took a more serious approach, with themes of the space age and the Olympic Games.
A golden spider-like figure descended from the sky into a dark world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols, including the flag of Greece, the birthplace of the ancient games, and the five interlocking Olympic rings, were lit up white in the arena as tens of thousands of lights sparkled like fireflies.

“Culture of Peace”
The past two weeks of sporting drama have seen China and the United States battle it out for the top spot in the medal table right down to the final event.
In a repeat of the pain inflicted on France by the United States in the men's basketball final, the U.S. women's basketball team inflicted a painful one-point defeat on France to claim its 40th gold medal and first place in the medal 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 provided the 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 of Israel's military campaign in Gaza escalating into a wider conflict in the Middle East, and France's heightened security alert were all looming as the Games got underway.
IOC President Thomas Bach greeted the athletes as he declared the Games closed.
“During all this time, you have lived peacefully together under one roof in the Olympic Village. You have embraced each other. You have respected each other, even if your countries were divided by war and conflict. You have created a culture of peace.”

High level for Los Angeles
The French celebrated a new baby, as swimmer Marchand became king of swimming, before French judoka Teddy Riner asserted his dominance by winning his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles put her Tokyo misery behind her to return to the Olympics after a long wait in front of a star-studded crowd. She arrived there as the most decorated gymnast in the world and left with three more gold medals to add to her trophy cabinet.
Athletics made their Olympic debut – amid some mockery 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 broken out, although it has had to deal with some controversies.
The escalating doping scandal among Chinese athletes has cast a shadow over Olympic swimming as the United States faces its biggest challenge to its dominance in decades.
A storm over gender eligibility has hit women's boxing, exposing the toxic relationship between the International Olympic Committee and the widely discredited International Boxing Federation.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion Seine clean-up campaign has rewarded Paris with the sight of triathlon and marathon swimmers racing down the river through central Paris, without a wave of illnesses — even if bacteria levels have forced some training to be cancelled.
But for all the sporting triumph and drama, the biggest star of the show for many was the City of Light itself and the stunning backdrop it provided for much of the competition.
“They have a big challenge ahead of them. There's a lot of work to do. Are we going to see Hollywood next? That's something worth playing with,” said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a U.S. national team jersey outside the Stade de France.