Key events
Around 10,500 athletes took part in Paris 2024, not all of them have stuck around for the closing party but a good number are out there dancing and cavorting. And, just as in Paris 1924, thousands of selfies are being taken.
“So many great sporting moments” says Emma Harbour “but for me I loved that this games had spectators again. The crowds were amazing in their enthusiasm and support and so many of the athletes mentioned this fact in their interviews.”
Yep – the exuberance of the fans has been a revelation over the past few weeks. A visceral reminder of what was missing in Tokyo due to the pandemic. It must make such a difference to compete in front of a passionate and knowledgeable crowd.
Hello to Inge Kersten who emails in some highlights from a Dutch perspective:
“Worthy de Jong amazing final second 2 point shot in the basketball 3×3, Hollywood worthy…
Femke Bol going from 4th to 1st in the mixed 4×400, Sifan Hassan’s insane schedule resulting in two bronze and an amazing gold, Harrie Lafreysen getting his hat-trick
and (apologies but) Netherlands finishing 6th!
Thanks to you and your colleagues for an amazing liveblog. See you at the Paralympics?”
It’s been a real pleasure – thank you Inge and absolutely – we’ll be doing it all again come the 28th August. Can’t wait.
IOC President Thomas Bach and French President Emmanuel Macron have arrived in the Stade de France. Better late than never lads. Neither of them abseiled into the stadium. Wusses.
The French flag is carried into the stadium and the Orchestre Divertimento and Maîtrise de Fontainebleau perform a particularly stirring rendition of La Marseillaise.
Here come the Flagbearers! DON’T TRIP OVER! Antoine Dupont nearly stacks it on a rogue bit of cable as he enters the stadium! The hunky rugby star just manages to stay on his feet as if he was escaping an ankle tap tackle. A few other near trips follow – someone is going to get fired for that shoddy cable work. Or at the very list a dressing down by a health and safety officer.
Andrew Cotter and Hazel Irvine have started commentary on the Beeb. Class acts both. Can’t promise the same amount of coiffed professionalism on here, I’ve just cracked open a continental lager on an empty stomach.
This is a lovely start. As the sun sets over the Jardins des Tuileries – where the Olympic Cauldron is located – Zaho de Sagazan and the choir of the Académie Haendel-Hendrix sing Édith Piaf’s Sous le ciel de Paris.
Everything sounds better in French. They could be singing the text from one of Francois Hollande’s scooter’s MOT certificates and it’d still sound like the most romantic thing in the world.
A huge cheer can be heard from inside the 80,000 seater Stade de France as a suited and booted Leon Marchand appears on the screens. Marchand strolls up to the cauldron unencumbered by his four gold (and single bronze) medals and lights a lantern with the flame. The camera lingers on him as he walks off. I should think he’s on the way to the Stadium. Best get a wriggle on Leon, we know you can.
Fifty quid to whoever can guess the tune that accompanies the Beeb’s Olympic montage? In fact, forget that. Of course it’s ‘One Day Like This” by Elbow. Overused at this sort of thing yes but still the best and possibly only deployment of the word ‘chamois’ in a pop song?
The closing ceremony will also include the parade of athletes where flag-waving fans will get their dirty fix. Great Britain’s golden duo of Alex Yee and Bryony Page will be bearing the Union Jack.
We’ll also see -amongst the razzamatazz – the thanking of the 45,000 volunteers, the medal ceremony for the women’s marathon, the extinguishing of the Olympic flame and the proclamation of the end of the Olympic Games, by Thomas Bach – president of the International Olympic Committee. For now…
Paris is hugged by a pink sky and looks resplendent on the TV footage. Have the Beeb put some sort of filter on that? Seems almost too perfect.It’s beautiful enough to bring a tear to the eye and send you grasping for the Gauloises. C’est magnifique.
Over the next few hours we’ll see the Olympic flag ceremonially transferred from Paris to LA and more than likely an entire country’s GDP of fireworks spaffed into the inky Parisian sky at the close.
Each host nation is given free reign to celebrate however they see fit:
Celebratory moments from previous Olympic Games have seen a reunion of the Spice Girls, the British pop group arriving into the arena standing atop the famous London black cab taxis singing ‘Spice up your Life’ at London 2012.
At Sydney 2000, Australian popstar Kylie Minogue brought the curtain down on the first Games of the new millennium with a rendition of ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ clad in a bright pink showgirl costume, complete with feathers.”
‘Records’ is the somewhat cryptic name given to the 2024 Olympic Closing ceremony. I’m going to stick my neck on the line and say that music will play a sizeable part. The official Olympic website has some more incisive/equally spurious blurb”
More than 100 performers, acrobats, dancers, and circus artists will join world-renowned singers in various musical performances. Part of the show will take place in the air, accompanied by spectacular lighting effects and the flair of the French in the costumes, with the overall effect taking spectators – both those at home and in person – “on a journey into the past, to the origins of the Games, but also into the future, and ultimately to a timeless universe”.
Ceremony artistic director Richard Jolly describes the show as “very visual”, “acrobatic” and “operatic”, with a “great visual fresco”.
On 11 August 2024, the Olympic Games will be over, and the Olympic flame will be extinguished, that moment will remind us just how precious these Olympic Games are – a unique monument to a shared experience – and therefore fragile.”
Thanks for sending in some of your favourite moments. Keep ‘em coming.
“Bryony Page’s reaction to winning Trampoline Gold was wonderful!” says Stephen Thomas. “She’s apparently off to Cirque du Soleil next, after gaining a Biology PhD – is there anything this woman cannot do?!”
“Undoubtedly the best moment of the games has to be the DJ spinning John Lennon’s Imagine as the Women’s beach volleyball final was getting over-heated and they were about to kick sand into each others faces!” writes Alex Blackham
Pieter Van Stein plumps for “The basketball 3×3 final France v The Netherlands, especially the final seconds of regular time immediately followed by the short first-2-points-wins extension”
This is a lovely yarn from Ben Bloom:
Final Day Reportage: If you think our intrepid reporters on the ground in Paris have spent the final day of the games putting their cobble-corned trotters up and necking Châteauneuf-du-Pape like it’s going out of sell-by-date then you’d be very much mistaken:
This is pretty nifty. Want to check exactly who won what, in what time, when and where? We’ve got you covered:
Greatest moments of the 2024 Games? Do you agree or disagree with these? What’ve we missed and what wasn’t actually all that? These things won’t debate themselves. Feel free to have you say by whanging an email into the mailbag.
It’s not really about the final medal table though is it? Is it?
As we countdown to the main event, I’ll share some of our reports and features from the final day of action in Paris. The TV coverage of the event on the Beeb doesn’t get underway until 7pm. Countryfile is currently showing on Channel One and emitting it’s weekly Sunday evening dose of existentialism ‘what am I doing with my life living in a one bedroom flat in South London when I could be rearing snuggly looking sheep and living in idyllic rural bliss in Herefordshire’ type of thing. Maybe that is just me? Channel 4 is showing a decidedly un-Olympian ‘Secret World of Crisps’ and ITV a Harry Potter film for the BILLIONTH time.
Anyway – this is a better option than all of the above – The Guardian’s snappers have collated a jaw-droppingly lovely collection of pictures from the past two weeks. Enjoy.
Preamble
James Wallace
C’est fini. Well almost.
Can you believe it was only two weeks ago that Paris 2024 got under way? So much SPORT has happened since that it feels like a lifetime ago that the eyes of the sporting world were trained on a somewhat mizzly and murky Seine and the athlete flotillas.
Céline Dion’s performance of Edith Piaf’s Hymne a l’amour saved what had been something of a haphazard opening ceremony and set the tone for the triumph of the fortnight to follow. It’s been a belter hasn’t it?
We’ll have plenty of time to discuss the thrills, spills, highs, lows and favourite moments over the course of the next few hours. Please do get in touch at the details on the left of the page to have you say on all that has happened and also to comment on whatever the closing ceremony has in store. I can’t do this alone believe me.
Will the Olympic baton pass from Paris to LA go smoothly or is there a spillage or two in the pipes? It seems likely that Tom Cruise will abseil from the top of the Stade de France stadium roof and Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, H.E.R are slated to perform. As is, of course, Paris 2024’s superfan extraordinaire Snoop Dogg. Let’s hope it’s not Snoop in control of the metaphorical baton pass, he’s been known to drop it … oh I can’t even.
French musical royalty Air and Phoenix will also provide musical accompaniment to what Artistic director Thomas Jolly has promised to be a “science-fiction dream-like immersive journey through time”. You didn’t hear it here first.
All that and plenty more besides to come over the next few hours – the official start time of the closing ceremony is 8pm BST and it is due to finish at 10.30pm BST. I’ll be here for the duration. Let’s the Games begin close!