Paris 2024 bids ‘au revoir’
Hollywood star Tom Cruise abseiled from the roof of the Stade de France as Paris said farewell last Sunday (Aug 11) to an Olympics hailed as one of the most successful in history.
In front of 71,500 spectators, Cruise grabbed the Olympic flag before jumping on a motorbike to transport the flag to Los Angeles, where the next Games will be hosted in 2028.
The Paris Games were an undoubted success that delivered 17 days of spectacular sporting action.
Among the highlights was Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone producing a world record-breaking performance to become the first woman in history to win back-to-back Olympic 400 metre hurdles titles.
The 25-year-old blew away reigning world champion Femke Bol of the Netherlands to take gold in 50.37 seconds, betting her own world record of 50.65 secs set at the US Olympic trials in Eugene in June.
The victory extended McLaughlin-Levrone’s remarkable five-year unbeaten streak in the discipline and cemented her status as the greatest women’s 400m hurdler of all time.
Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon won her third straight Olympic 1,500m gold, while Julien Alfred from St. Lucia powered to a historic women’s 100m Olympic gold, the first Games medal ever won by the Caribbean island.
In the men’s 100m final world champion Noah Lyles roared to victory in 9.79 secs to claim gold in the closest finish in modern history – just five thousandths of a second separated him from Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
In tennis, Novak Djokovic defeated Carlos Alcaraz to claim a maiden Olympic title to add to his 24 Grand Slam wins and become just the fifth player to complete a career Golden Slam, joining Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal, Steffi Graf and Serena Williams as the only players to win all four Grand Slam tournaments and Olympic singles gold.
Elsewhere, Cindy Ngamba won the Refugee Olympic Team’s first ever medal when she settled for bronze in women’s boxing.
Ngamba, who was born in Cameroon but sought safe haven in Britain aged 11, was beaten by Panama’s Atheyna Bylon by split decision in the semi-finals of the women’s 75kg category but still secured a medal as boxing hands out bronze medals for losing semi-finalists.
The Refugee Olympic Team first competed at the Rio 2016 Games and is designed to represent forcibly displaced people worldwide, with 37 athletes from more than a dozen countries competing in Paris.
Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem won the men’s javelin title, his country’s first individual gold at an Olympics, with a Games record of 92.97 metres.
Previously, only two Pakistan athletes had won individual medals of any colour – a wrestling bronze in 1960 and a boxing bronze in 1988 – and all of the country’s previous three gold medals came in field hockey in 1960, 1968 and 1984.
Carlos Yulo from the Philippines won two golds in gymnastics, doubling his country’s previous tally while 17-year-old Arena Nemour of Algeria won the uneven bars title to become the first African to win an Olympic gymnastics medal of any colour.
Images of Olympic table tennis players from North Korea and South Korea taking a selfie together on the medal podium went viral in South Korea, hailed as a rare show of cross-border unity, while Australian skateboarding sensation Arisa Trew, just 14, won the women’s park event to become her country’s youngest ever gold medallist.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif claimed gold despite being embroiled in one of the biggest controversies of the Games regarding gender eligibility tests.
Khelif was disqualified from last year’s world championships after failing gender eligibility tests yet triumphed in Paris. “I am fully qualified to take part, I am a woman like any other. I was born a woman, lived a woman and competed as a woman,” she declared after her win.
The USA finished on top of the overall medal table with a total of 126 medals, with China in second place on 91. Both nations finished with 40 gold medals each.