The Olympics provided some much-needed light in decidedly dark times, writes IAN HERBERT, as the Paris games concluded with a ceremony worthy of the brilliance of the past two weeks Olympics officially drew to a close with a ceremony inside the Stade de France Paris games have provided a ray of light in what have been difficult times Attention now turns to the USA where the festival of sport will return in 2028 By Ian Herbert Published: 17:30 EDT, 11 August 2024 | Updated: 17:38 EDT, 11 August 2024 e-mail View comments The stadium illuminated by such brilliance these past weeks was cast into darkness as the Olympics closing ceremony’s theatrical element began last night. There was something very poignant about that. These Games are over and there is, once again, no counterpoint to the infernal gloom of the daily news narrative.
Raids are awaited imminently on Palestinian lands where Hamas fighters are said to be sheltering. Britain, shaken by days of rioting, is holding its breath. No-one pretends that sport shifts that narrative, though for a few weeks there have been a few shards of light.
Even the British Olympic Association’s chief executive Andy Anson – not a man for vague pronouncements - posited the notion here yesterday that the British athletes’ achievements can actually help salve the divides back at home. The mere process of staging Olympic ceremonies like this one can be treacherous in our divided times. Thomas Jolly, the French theatre director, received death threats after one of the many dance routines in the opening ceremony - which he orchestrated - was not received as he had intended and caused mortal offence.
The bigger challenge last night was clearing Olympic athletes off the stage after they got carried away with instructions to run onto the area in front of it, as a metaphor for them ‘taking possession of the world and its oceans.’ Hundreds gathered around iconic French band Pheonix, who were performing, and it took security guards ten minutes to clear them. The Stade de France was illuminated with light for one final time during the closing ceremony The Paris Olympics came to a close with a show that better represented the games as a whole compared to its opener French swimmer Leon Marchand collected the Olympic flame after winning four golds on home soil Your browser does not support iframes.
But out of that ceremonial darkness here there was, of course, light. Strobes, smartphone torches, flashing wristwatch-type devices handed out to any who would take them as they walked into the stadium. And then, someone dressed in gold was dropped through the stadium roof.
An interstellar traveller, apparently, who discovers the remains of the Olympic Games, in a distant future where they have disappeared, and undertakes to rebuild them. They certainly like their interpretive theatre here. The Paris Olympics have triumphed most, though, because of the absence of ostentation.
That was reflected, too, in a two-hour ceremony which was more conventional than the highly staged opening one and all the better for it. We saw Leon Marchand, swimming genius and emblem of French sporting magnificence, dressed in suit and black tie, collecting the Olympic flame, contained in a miner’s lamp, and carrying it alone across the deserted Tuileries Gardens on the beginning of its journey to the stadium. We witnessed an orchestral early rendition La Marseillaise, designed to take out any national triumphalism.
We heard the strains of Joe Dassin’s 1969 ‘Champs Elysees’, loved by so many here these last few weeks and just as much a soundtrack of these Games as Gala’s ‘Freed from Desire.’ The beauty of the ceremony lay in its modesty. The same can be said of these Games and Paris seem to feel slightly surprised that they actually managed to pull it all off in the way that they did.
‘We were told: “Paris? You’ll see, they’re French, it’s going to be a mess,”’ stated a headline in Le Monde at the weekend. The Olympics will not be a panacea for Parisian social harmony, any more than London’s were. The lives of the haves and have-nots will go on as before.
On Friday afternoon, the police were moving on the hawkers selling their barbecued sweetcorn on a street corner at Porte de Choisy, on the fringe of the banlieues which the city’s wealth does not reach. You could almost smell the tension. But the taxi drivers and the shopkeepers, always the best barometer of these things, reflect on the Olympics in a way which suggests that Paris emerges stronger.
‘My neighbour had a ticket and he gave it to me,’ said Roly, a Jamaican Uber driver, back at the wheel on Friday night after a morning at the athletics. The mood in the French capital suggests the Olympics has succeeded in bringing people together The eyes of the sporting world now turn to Los Angeles and its mayor Karen Bass with the countdown to 2028 already underway Who knows what the world will look like next month, let alone four years from now, but Los Angeles gave a sense of what its own Games will look like in 2028. On this evidence, it will be bigger, bolder, brasher.
The Angelanos offered up the Hollywood and Venice Beach backdrops to Paris. They had Snoop Dog, the most ubiquitous star of these Olympics, in this stadium to sell their story. Theirs would be ‘the most ambitious sports lineup in history’, LA promised – declaring, as its mayor Karen Bass took the Olympic flag, that ‘the next generation of sports icons will be born in Los Angeles.
The future of sport starts now.’ Another extraordinary two weeks out of time, no doubt, with little expense spared. But amid the bravado and extravagance, the American hosts might care to observe the triumph of the Paris Olympics and know that two weeks of modesty, creativity, subtly and imagination here have brought the world some much-needed light.
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