Tom Cruise steals the show in Saint-Denis as Grammy award-winning performers electrify Venice Beach in LA.
And just like that, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are over. After months (even years!) of anticipation and two weeks of fever-pitch excitement, the City of Light can finally heave a sigh of relief, give itself a pat on the back, and say “Bien joué,’’ Job well done!
The modern Olympics has come a long way from its first iteration in 1896 when it featured nine sports and a pool of 241 all-male athletes. Fast forward to exactly 100 years later, Paris has just hosted 10,500 athletes, with an equal number of men and women, competing in 32 events. Though not without hiccups—and plagued with controversies, some related to gender—it cannot be denied that much has been achieved.
The road leading to the curtain call of the games had a few bumps, following controversies which surrounded the opening ceremony. The executive director of the closing ceremony at the Olympic Games has admitted he had to revise the script “for the umpteenth time” after a backlash against the opening event on the Seine, The Guardian reports.
Despite Thierry Reboul’s insistence that there “had been no attempt to parody the Last Supper in the first spectacle but that it had referenced a 17th-century Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods, the ceremony drew angry response especially from Catholic bishops and Christian groups and even death threats at him. This made him and artistic director Thomas Jolly “more careful about potential misinterpretations” of Sunday’s ceremony at the Stade de France.
Death threats aside, Reboul and Jolly could now rest assured that the closing ceremonies gave the 2024 Paris Olympics the ending it deserves. The POST gathers here some of the most unforgettable events during the event, the proverbial cherry on top on what we can all agree to be an Olympics to remember, for better or worse.
Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things
In a fitting end to the Summer Olympics which saw hosting duties handed over to Los Angeles, the cradle of Hollywood, actor Tom Cruise descended from the roof of Stade de France, then he took the Olympic flag from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass—LA’s first female mayor—as part of the handover before departing on a motorcycle.
A video soundtracked by the Red Hot Chili Peppers then played showing him driving the motorcycle into a plane and jumping out in Los Angeles, where he affixed Olympic rings to the Hollywood sign.
Yep, it couldn’t get even more Hollywood than this.
Though certainly benefitting from the star power of the Mission Impossible star, I would have to say that the Rio-Tokyo handover with the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe popping out of a green pipe and going full cosplay as Super Mario is still the most memorable.
The Tokyo-Paris handover, which happened during Covid, saw the ceremonial gesture from the Tokyo side happening in a near empty stadium. Over in Paris, however, things were more festive. The Paris 2024 Olympic flag was unfurled from the Eiffel Tower (reportedly the biggest flag in the world), while the Patrouille Acrobatique de France, wowed the crowds with a flyover that displayed the country’s colors in the sky.
Star-studded performances from Saint-Denis to Venice Beach
After the passing of the flag, Stade de France was treated to a rendition of the American national anthem from five-time Grammy Award-winning artist H.E.R.
After Cruise unveiled the Hollywood sign, the flag was transported via skateboard to a stage on the palm tree-lined Venice Beach where Grammy Award winners were on stage to greet the flag.
Red Hot Chili Peppers performed Can’t Stop and Billie Eilish performed “Birds of a Feather.” The 22-year-old Grammy and Academy award-winning artist was dressed in an oversized shirt meant to look like the red-white-and-blue Ralph Lauren polo shirts that the American Olympians were wearing. Then Snoop Dogg, in a red-white-and-blue blazer, performed a snippet of Drop It Like It’s Hot, and was joined by Dr. Dre for his hit The Next Episode.
In Stade de France, French artists took the time to shine led by Phoenix, the Grammy Award-winning rock band from Versailles, which played hits Lisztomania, If I Ever Feel Better, and 1901.
Athletes were also given the chance to join in on the fun as part of a section of the closing ceremony was called “Athlete Karaoke,” which saw them belting out Queen’s We Are the Champions after parading into the stadium.
The closing ceremony ended with a goosebump-inducing rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way by the French singer Yseult.
Carlos Yulo, Aira Villegas share flag-bearing duties
No Olympic opening and closing ceremony is complete without the parade of athletes. For the Philippines, two-time Olympic gold medalist Carlos Yulo and bronze medalist Aira Villegas took on flag-bearing duties. The two helped lead the way for the Philippines to mark 100 years of Olympic participation with its all-time best campaign, boasting a historic two golds and two bronzes.
After two weeks of grueling competition among the world’s elite athletes, Team USA topped the medal tally (gold 40, silver 44, bronze 42 for a total of 126), followed by China (gold 40, silver 27, bronze 42 for a total of 91), and Japan (gold 20, silver 12, bronze 13 for a total of 45).
Southeast Asia, meanwhile, surpassed its Tokyo gold-medal haul with a total of five golds, three silvers, and eight bronzes led by the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Their collective total of 16 medals were second only to the 5-10-3 tally from Rio 2016, and an improvement from the 3-4-6 haul from Tokyo in 2021.
