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

SAINT-DENIS, France: Aiming to prove that outdoing Paris is not a mission impossible, Los Angeles sent skydiver Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on the road Sunday as it took over the 2028 Olympic hosting duties from the French capital, which ended its 2024 Games the way it began — with joy and verve.
In Paris, the Olympic Games ended, bringing glitz and glamour to the capital and breathing new life into the Olympic brand, which had suffered from the difficulties of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and the soulless spirit of the Covid-19-hit event in Tokyo.
Even the Parisians were swept up in the Olympic enthusiasm.
“We wanted to dream. We have Leon Marchand,” Paris 2024 boss Tony Estanguet told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who won four gold medals in swimming.
“From one day to the next, Paris became a party and France found itself. From a country of complainers, we became a country of rabid fans.”

Following in Paris' footsteps will be a challenge: for the first Games in 100 years, the city's skyline was used in spectacular fashion. The Eiffel Tower and other famous monuments became Olympic stars, serving as backdrops and venues for the medal-winning events.

But the city of Angeles has shown that, like the City of Light, it too has aces up its sleeve.
Cruise – in his role as Ethan Hunt – thrilled the crowd as he descended from the roof of the stadium to the electric guitar riffs of “Mission Impossible.” Once he was back on the ground and had shaken hands with the enthusiastic athletes, he took the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, attached it to the back of a motorcycle and sped out of the arena.

The appetizing message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 also promises to be an eye-opener.
Still, this was essentially the night of Paris – the 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 star-studded show at France's national stadium, mixing unbridled celebration with a solemn call for peace from IOC President Thomas Bach.

“These were sensational Olympic Games from start to finish,” said Bach.
After announcing his intention to step down next year, Bach also struck a more serious tone, 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 us live this culture of peace every day.”
Then came another gear change, courtesy of Cruise.
In one recorded segment, Cruise performed a live rope descent from a rooftop from dizzying heights, rode his bicycle past the Eiffel Tower, boarded a plane, and then parachuted over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the O's of the famous Hollywood sign to form five intertwined Olympic rings.
Thousands of athletes danced and sang throughout the night, cheering on the event – ​​as well as the Olympic-themed artistic show, complete with fireworks.
Their enthusiasm boiled over when, at one point, crowds of them rushed the stage. Stadium announcements in French and English told them to turn back. Some stayed and formed 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 pants with the Olympic rings after his performance at the Paris Games – and his longtime collaborator Dr. Dre kept the party going with performances on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
They are all native Californians, including SHE, who sang the US national anthem live in the Stade de France, which was packed with over 70,000 people.

At the beginning of the show, the stadium crowd went wild when the giant screens showed French swimmer Léon Marchand wearing a suit and tie instead of the swimming trunks he wore when he won his four gold medals, accepting the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Garden in Paris.
At the end of the show, Marchand reappeared to the audience's loud shouts of “Léon, Léon” and blew out the flame. The Paris Games were over.
But they will come back.
“I call on the youth of the world to gather in Los Angeles in four years,” Bach said.

205 countries, 9,000 athletes

As the sunset turned to a delicate pink and night fell, the athletes first marched into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories – a sign of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts, including in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. The words “Together, united for peace” were displayed on the stadium screens.
After the 329 medal events were over, the expected 9,000 athletes – many with their shiny medals – and team staff filled the arena, dancing and cheering to thumping beats.

Unlike Tokyo 2021, where the games were postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and there were hardly any fans, the athletes and the more than 70,000 spectators in the Paris arena celebrated wildly and sang together as Queen's anthem “We Are the Champions” rang out. Several French athletes crowd surfed. Members of the US team jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.
The National Stadium, the largest in France, was one of the targets of the IS militants and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on November 13, 2015. The joy and jubilation that erupted during the Paris Games, when Marchand and other French athletes won 64 medals – 16 of them gold – marked an important turning point in the city's recovery from that night of terror.
At the closing ceremony, the final medals were awarded – each one decorated with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. In keeping with the first Olympic Games to focus on gender parity, they all went to women – the gold, silver and bronze medalists from the women's marathon the previous Sunday.
The women's marathon took the place of the men's race that traditionally concluded previous Games. The move was part of an effort in Paris to put more of the Olympic spotlight on women's sporting achievements. Paris was also where women made their first Olympic debut at the 1900 Games.

The US team once again topped the medal table, with a total of 126 medals, including 40 gold medals. Three of these went to gymnast Simone Biles, who chose her mental health over competition in Tokyo in 2021 to make a brilliant return to the top of the Olympic podium.
Unlike the rainy but exuberant opening ceremony in Paris, which took place along the Seine in the heart of the city, the artistic part of the closing ceremony was rather sober, with themes from the space age and the Olympic Games.
A figure cloaked in gold 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, illuminated white in the arena, where tens of thousands of lights glittered like fireflies.

“Culture of Peace”
In two weeks of sporting drama, China and the United States fought for first place in the medal table until the last event.
Similar to how France suffered against the United States in the final of the men's basketball championship, the American women's basketball team inflicted a bitter one-point loss on France, securing their 40th gold medal and first place in the medal table.

As the world emerged from the COVID pandemic in 2022, Paris had promised an Olympic “light at the end of the tunnel,” setting the stage for a carefree Games when the Olympics returned to Europe for the first time in over a decade.
But Russia's war in Ukraine on Europe's eastern flank, the danger that Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip could escalate into a larger conflict in the Middle East, and France's heightened security alert were ever-present as the Games began.
International Committee President Thomas Bach greeted the athletes as he declared the Games over.
“All this time, you have lived peacefully under one roof in the Olympic Village. You have embraced 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: swimmer Marchand emerged as king of the pool before French judoka Teddy Riner maintained the undisputed upper hand to win his fifth Olympic gold medal.
Simone Biles left her Tokyo curve woes behind and celebrated her long-awaited Olympic return in front of a star-studded crowd. She arrived as the most successful gymnast in the world and left the arena with three more gold medals for her trophy case.
Breakdancing made its Olympic debut – sparking some mockery on social media – while 3×3 basketball, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing made their second appearances.
The IOC will be relieved that there were no major scandals, but it did have to deal with some controversies.
A simmering doping controversy involving Chinese athletes loomed over the Olympic swimming competitions, where the United States' dominance faced its biggest challenge in decades.
A storm of indignation has erupted in women's boxing over gender eligibility, exposing the toxic relationship between the IOC and the widely discredited International Boxing Federation.
Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion cleanup of the Seine has allowed Paris to once again enjoy the sight of triathlon and marathon swimmers competing on the river through downtown Paris without a wave of illness – although some training sessions had to be canceled due to bacteria levels.
But for all the sporting triumph and drama, for many the biggest star of the show was the City of Light itself and the fabulous backdrop it provided for much of the competition.
“They have a high bar to reach. There's a lot to do,” said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a U.S. national team T-shirt outside the Stade de France. “Hollywood next? That's a margin.”