Winter Olympics closing ceremony attracts curtain on Games

Just a few extra musical acts wrap up a ceremony that’s had opera, dance, DJs, flag waving, medals and a few IOC speeches. The ceremony was actually authentically Italian and the Verona Arena performed its half, an evocative venue for the event.

After 17 days, 2900 athletes, 116 gold medals and 150 minutes of closing ceremony, the flame is extinguished and the Winter Olympics strikes on to the French Alps for 2030.

That’s it for us, too. Thanks for studying.

Kirsty Coventry takes to the lectern to congratulate volunteers, athletes and her personal group for a profitable Games. The common consensus is that it has, certainly, been a hit regardless of various political challenges for the IOC. They will probably face extra in Los Angeles on the subsequent summer season Games in 2028.

“The Olympic Games will continue to be the space where athletes can inspire the world through sport freely, safely and proudly,” she mentioned earlier than declaring the Games closed and seeing the Olympic flame extinguished.

Then we’re shortly again to the excessive opera that we began with to extinguish the sunshine in a figurative sense, too.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry enters, together with varied different dignitaries, behind the Olympic flag. She’s all smiles regardless of a tricky first Games in cost, the place her tearful response to her group banning Ukraine skeleton athlete Vladyslav will probably be the enduring reminiscence of her.

The flag is handed to a pair of beaming representatives from France, who will host the subsequent Winter Olympics within the French Alps in 2030. The French flag is then raised to a brass-y, subdued rendition of the French anthem, ‘La Marseillaise’ that regularly builds a bit momentum with out each reaching the punch it normally packs.

After a mercifully transient spinning of 90s Eurodance earworm ‘Blue’ by Eiffel 65, we see a montage of the quite a few volunteers who assist these items run easily. With this Games so unfold, the logistics had been significantly difficult this time round.

Then there is a second to recollect these now not with us by way of an interpretive dance. Next it is the final inventive component of the night time, one other dance symbolizing the poetic journey by way of the states of water. Mostly ice and snow the related ones right here you’d think about.

As is custom, medals for the final set of occasions of the Games can be awarded within the stadium. We begin off with the ladies’s 50 km mass begin cross nation snowboarding, gained by Sweden’s Ebba Andersson.

Then it is the identical occasion for the boys. This one, muc like fve different occasions, was gained by Johannes Hosflot Klaebo, who gained six golds in whole and shaped a part of a Norwegian podium clear sweep on this occasion. 

The nation of simply 5.5 million have punched effectively above their weight to complete prime of the medal desk by far.

An actual change of tempo now, with some digital music bringing dozens of figures that resemble white mushrooms on to a stage full of mirrors. One splits off to leap on a trampoline after which we get an enormous determine in a kind of jellyfish get-up reciting traces from, we’re reliably knowledgeable, Dante’s Divine Comedy, a story poem revealed in 1321.

After the flag bearers full their lengthy trudge in to the stadium, athletes from all types of nations flood by way of the spectacular stone archways and on to the stage. 

They simply maintain coming, which makes you realise the dimensions of an Olympics. Though some can have gone dwelling or on to different competitions, there have been 2900 athletes who competed over the course of the video games in Italy. Even that’s dwarfed by a summer season video games although. There had been 10,500 athletes at Paris 2024 and can probably be extra at LA 2028.

As the Italian flag is raised and the nation’s anthem is picked out on a lone trumpet later joined by a full orchestra and choir, the nation’s medalists stand aspect by aspect on stage belting out the phrases regardless of the slower tempo than traditional.

The digicam pans to IOC chief, Kirsty Coventry, who’s decked out in a blinding white bomber jacket emblazoned with the Olympic rings.

Then the flame is carried in by 4 males in white tracksuits and beanie hats, certainly one of whom is holding a glass vase with mentioned flame.

According to the IOC, it’s “a manifestation of the positive values that Man has always associated with the symbolism of fire and thus makes the link between the ancient and the modern Games.”

The flame is all the time lit in Olympia, Greece, a number of months earlier than the Games and carried to that 12 months’s venue the place it’s saved burning all through the occasion. 

And we’re off! The gorgeous Verona Arena is prepared and begins in a style acquainted to it, with an operatic efficiency getting issues getting into entrance of an viewers principally wrapped up in disposable ponchos. 

As talked about earlier, there was a distinctly European really feel to the highest of the medal desk. Aside from the US in 2nd and Japan in tenth, the remainder of the highest 10 on the desk had been European nations.

While we await the ceremony to start, it is perhaps a great time to take a look at our tales on how large a distinction internet hosting has made for the Italians and the German ski jumper who overcame a concern of heights to win gold.

Even at this late stage, there have been a few important information traces from the Games’ ultimate weekend. On Saturday, the IOC cleared FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who can be an IOC member, saying he had not damaged the Olympic Charter’s neutrality requirement by donning a pink MAGA-style USA hat on the first assembly of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace earlier within the week.

IOC chief Kirsty Coventry mentioned she didn’t even know Infantino was an IOC member when pressed forward of the choice throughout a press convention the place she admitted she “wasn’t aware” of various points which face her group.

Then, on Sunday, forward of the closing ceremony, protesters took the streets of Verona to object to having had the Games of their area. Hundreds of individuals marched by way of Verona simply hours earlier than the ceremony was set to begin to protest in opposition to housing prices and environmental considerations linked to the Winter Games.

The “Olympics? No thanks” rally was organised by college teams and others that oppose internet hosting an occasion they are saying disrupts forests, pours concrete onto fragile land and deepens social inequality.

While there have been numerous sporting achievements, there have additionally been loads of moments throughout this Games the place the highlight was away from the occasions.

Perhaps the most important was the IOC resolution to ban Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych from carrying a helmet that featured photos of Ukrainian athletes killed throughout Russia’s battle on Ukraine.

Heraskevych instructed DW moments after his disqualification was introduced that: “If (the) IOC reacts in a way with common sense, we will not have this terrible scandal now. And then there is much less politics in this competition and also much more attention (being paid) to the athletes in the competition now.”

The new boss of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry had tears down her eyes when asserting the choice, admitting that it was ” a message of memory and no one is disagreeing with that” however confirming it broke IOC guidelines.

There had been additionally protests in opposition to the presence of American ICE brokers, a British skier urinating a profanity in opposition to Donald Trump within the snow and the choice, introduced throughout these Games, that Russian athletes can compete beneath their nationwide flag on the upcoming Paralympics.

Organizers the IOC have promised to inform the story of Italy by way of a “tapestry of music, art, and storytelling,” including that the ceremony will  showcase “not only athletic excellence, but also Italian cultural identity and innovation.”

Performers embody Italian singer and rapper Achille Lauro, award-winning Roman actress Benedetta Porcaroli and Italian DJ Gabry Ponte.

As with the opening ceremony earlier this month, every nation — with a handful of exceptions — can have chosen athletes to be their flagbearers. In Germany’s case this can be Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt. The pair turned the nation’s most profitable Winter Olympians by every successful a seventh gold in luge.

Hello and welcome to DW’s stay weblog of the 2026 Winter Olympics closing ceremony.

After 17 days of snowboarding, sliding, leaping and curling, the USA defeated neighbors Canada to win the final of 116 gold medals at Milan-Cortina. That left the US second on the medal desk, six behind Norway whose Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo gained six on his personal, changing into probably the most profitable Winter Olympian of all time within the course of.

With the game over, it would quickly be time for the curtain to formally come down on the Games. The closing ceremony will happen on the Verona Olympic Arena, a fantastically preserved historical amphitheater inbuilt 30AD and is scheduled to start out at 20:30 CET and run for someplace approaching three hours.