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 travellers 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 said.

Many of the widely praised temporary sports stadiums nestled among Paris’s landmarks will be used for the Paralympics, which begin on August 28, with many tickets still available.

During Sunday night’s closing Olympics ceremony, which stressed the event’s core message of peace in a troubled world, 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.

Much of the media commentary on Monday focused on the uplifting impact of the Games on the generally morose national mood in France.

Paris 2024 organising chief Tony Estanguet told the cheering closing ceremony crowd that the Games had transformed “a nation of implacable complainers” into “unbridled supporters who don’t want to stop singing”.

“We wanted to dream. We got Leon Marchand,” Estanguet told the crowd, referring to the French swimmer who won four golds. “From one day to the next Paris became a party and France found itself.”

Just weeks before the Olympics, snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron plunged the country into a political crisis with a hung parliament and a historic number of seats for the far-right National Rally party.

Macron, who is yet to appoint a prime minister, said on Monday at a reception at the Elysee Palace that the Olympics had shown the world “the true face of France”.

“We don’t want life to get back to normal,” he said.

Le Monde newspaper said the Games had “offered the capital and the entire country more than two weeks of fervour 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.”

“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.”

NEXT STOP LOS ANGELES

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.

Cruise’s exit on a motorbike saw the closing ceremony transition to a prerecorded video of the 62-year-old skydiving down to the Hollywood sign, where a wide shot showed the Olympic rings incorporated into the LA landmark.

The flag was then passed from US Olympians past and present as it traversed the city before reaching a beach party, where the LA music icons the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre performed.

Bass has acknowledged Paris has set a high standard. But the City of Angels has billed itself as a beacon of diversity and will have Hollywood to fall back on.

“They’ve got a high bar to reach. A lot of work to do,” said James Rutledge, 59, a former banker wearing a Team USA t-shirt outside the Stade de France. “Hollywood next? That’s something to play with.”

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 two weeks of sporting drama saw China and the United States duke it out for top spot in the medal table right down to the last event

Echoing the heartache delivered to France by the United States in the men’s basketball final, the American women’s basketball side handed France a gut-wrenching one-point defeat to earn a 40th gold medal and top spot on 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” and to provide the stage for a carefree Games.

But Russia’s war in Ukraine on Europe’s eastern flank, conflict in the Middle East, and France’s heightened state of security alert loomed large as the Games got under way.

Bach saluted the athletes as he declared the Games closed.

“During all this time, you lived peacefully together under one roof in the Olympic Village. You embraced each other,” Bach said.

“You respected each other, even if your countries are divided by war and conflict. You created a culture of peace.”

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2024