PARIS: France bid a reluctant farewell on Monday to an “enchanted” fortnight of Olympic sport as athletes headed home from Paris praising a dazzling edition of the Games that has breathed new life into the biggest show on earth.
Hollywood star Tom Cruise delivered stardust at the closing ceremony on Sunday evening — and a link with the next Games in Los Angeles — by abseiling into the national stadium.
The “Mission Impossible” star descended on a wire in front of 71,500 spectators, grabbed the Olympic flag and jumped onto a motorbike, to the delight of thousands of dancing athletes and awe-struck fans.
The final act of the Paris Olympics brought relief that an event foreshadowed by worries about terror attacks, strikes or protests had passed off with barely a hitch.
But there was also sadness that two weeks of high-spirited celebration had come to an end.
“Keep the flame alive,” urged the front-page headline of France’s biggest sports newspaper, L’Equipe, which featured new national swimming hero Leon Marchand and urged French people to maintain the spirit “of this enchanted fortnight.”
At the Athletes’ Village in northern Paris, bleary-eyed athletes were packing their bags after a late night, with the French capital’s two main airports braced for a huge influx of travelers and sports equipment.
Magda Skarbonkiewicz, a Team USA fencer, said she would return home filled with memories of competing inside the Grand Palais, one of the historic venues used around the French capital.
“It’s such an iconic venue and just nothing like I’ve ever seen before,” she told AFP. “It’s amazing to see so many people care about fencing the way the French people do.”
During Sunday night’s closing ceremony, which stressed the Olympics’ core message of peace and cooperation, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach had praised the Paris Games for being “sport at its best.”
“These were sensational Olympic Games from start to finish,” Bach said. “Or dare I say: Seine-sational Games,” the IOC chief quipped in a pun about the river flowing through Paris which was a sometimes fickle star of the event.
Observers had seen Paris 2024 as essential for the Olympics brand as a whole, coming after a Covid-affected edition in Tokyo and a corruption-tainted version in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Around 9,000 athletes flooded into the Stade de France on Sunday night for a show that featured music from French electro act Air, guitar band Phoenix, Belgian singer Angele and the Cambodian rapper VannDa.
“We knew you would be brilliant, but you were magic,” Paris 2024 organizing chief Tony Estanguet told the crowd during a triumphalist speech.
He said the Games had transformed “a nation of implacable complainers” into “unbridled supporters who don’t want to stop singing.”
Much of the media commentary has focused on the uplifting impact of the Games on the generally morose national mood.
Just weeks before the Olympics, snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron delivered a hung parliament and a historic number of seats for the far-right National Rally party.
“The Paris Games offered the capital and the entire country more than two weeks of fervor and happiness that were so unexpected and appreciated given that they came after a political period dominated by the sad passions of decline and xenophobia,” said an editorial in Le Monde newspaper.
“For 17 days the stereotype of the indifferent, grumpy Frenchman went missing,” wrote sports writer Owen Slot in The Times newspaper, adding that Paris had “made the Olympic Games look more beautiful than ever before.”
The closing spectacle marked the beginning of the four-year countdown to the LA Games, and American gymnastics icon Simone Biles joined Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass as the Olympic flag was formally handed over.
The ceremony followed 17 days of drama-filled sporting action lit up by Biles, American sprinter Noah Lyles, Pakistan’s javelin king Arshad Nadeem and casual Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec, who has become an Internet sensation.
They also featured a damaging gender row about two female boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who both went on to win gold.
The last day of sporting action saw the United States pip China for top spot in the battle for medals after the US women’s basketball team squeezed past France 67-66 to clinch the last gold of the Games.
The win — the eighth consecutive Olympic women’s basketball title won by the USA — ensured the Americans finished level with China on 40 golds each.
The USA however finished on top of the overall medal table with a total of 126 medals, with China in second place on 91.