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France bid a reluctant farewell on Monday to an “enchanted” fortnight of Olympic sport as athletes headed dwelling from Paris praising a blinding version of the Video games that has breathed new life into the largest present on earth. Hollywood star Tom Cruise delivered stardust on the closing ceremony on Sunday night — and a hyperlink with the subsequent Video games in Los Angeles — by abseiling into the nationwide stadium. The “Mission Inconceivable” star descended on a wire in entrance of 71,500 spectators, grabbed the Olympic flag and jumped onto a bike, to the delight of 1000’s of dancing athletes and awe-struck followers. The ultimate act of the Paris Olympics introduced reduction that an occasion foreshadowed by worries about terror assaults, strikes or protests had handed off with barely a hitch.
However there was additionally unhappiness that two weeks of high-spirited celebration had come to an finish.
“Preserve the flame alive,” urged the front-page headline of France’s largest sports activities newspaper, L’Equipe, which featured new nationwide swimming hero Leon Marchand and urged French individuals to keep up the spirit “of this enchanted fortnight”.
On the Athletes’ Village in northern Paris, bleary-eyed athletes had been packing their baggage after a late night time, with the French capital’s two principal airports braced for an enormous inflow of travellers and sports activities tools.
Magda Skarbonkiewicz, a Workforce USA fencer, stated she would return dwelling full of reminiscences of competing contained in the Grand Palais, one of many historic venues used across the French capital.
“It is such an iconic venue and simply nothing like I’ve ever seen earlier than,” she instructed AFP.
Lots of the extensively praised short-term sports activities stadiums nestled amongst Paris’s landmarks might be used for the Paralympics, which start on August 28, with many tickets nonetheless accessible.
Throughout Sunday night time’s closing Olympics ceremony, which pressured the occasion’s core message of peace in a troubled world, Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach had praised the Paris Video games for being “sport at its finest”.
“These had been sensational Olympic Video games from begin to end,” Bach stated. “Or dare I say: Seine-sational Video games,” the IOC chief quipped in a pun in regards to the river flowing via Paris which was a typically fickle star of the occasion.
Observers had seen Paris 2024 as important for the Olympics model as a complete, coming after a Covid-affected version in Tokyo and a corruption-tainted model in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
A lot of the media commentary on Monday centered on the uplifting influence of the Video games on the widely morose nationwide temper in France.
Paris 2024 organising chief Tony Estanguet instructed the cheering closing ceremony crowd that the Video games had reworked “a nation of implacable complainers” into “unbridled supporters who do not wish to cease singing”.
Simply weeks earlier than the Olympics, snap elections referred to as by President Emmanuel Macron plunged the nation right into a political disaster with a hung parliament and a historic variety of seats for the far-right Nationwide Rally get together.
Macron, who’s but to nominate a chief minister, stated on Monday at a reception on the Elysee Palace that the Olympics had proven the world “the true face of France”.
“We do not need life to get again to regular,” he stated.
Le Monde newspaper stated the Video games had “supplied the capital and your complete nation greater than two weeks of fervour and happiness that had been so surprising and appreciated provided that they got here after a political interval dominated by the unhappy passions of decline and xenophobia.”
“For 17 days the stereotype of the detached, grumpy Frenchman went lacking,” wrote sports activities author Owen Slot in The Instances newspaper, including that Paris had “made the Olympic Video games look extra stunning than ever earlier than.”
The closing spectacle marked the start of the four-year countdown to the LA Video games, and American gymnastics icon Simone Biles joined Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass because the Olympic flag was formally handed over.
The ceremony adopted 17 days of drama-filled sporting motion lit up by Biles, American sprinter Noah Lyles, Pakistan’s javelin king Arshad Nadeem and informal Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec, who has develop into an Web sensation.
Additionally they featured a harmful gender row about two feminine boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who each went on to win gold.
The final day of sporting motion noticed the US pip China for high spot within the battle for medals after the US girls’s basketball crew squeezed previous France 67-66 to clinch the final gold of the Video games.
The USA completed on high of the general medal desk with a complete of 126 medals, with China in second place on 91.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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