In the run-up to and throughout the Games, organizers repeatedly touted the Games as “safe and secure,” and described athletes and others within the Olympic bubble as the “most tested community almost anywhere in the world.” Thomas Bach echoed that sentiment at the closing ceremony, making reference to the coronavirus pandemic and saying that the athletes gave people hope.Īll told, 436 people related to the Olympics - nearly two-thirds of whom were residents of Japan - tested positive for the virus since early July. Thomas Bach during his closing ceremony speech. It also speculated that maybe, just maybe, there will soon be a Games that will be about running and jumping rather than testing and quarantining. But this year, the video peek at Paris 2024 offered not only a sense of excitement about the next Games on the horizon.
24, and some fireworks.Īs usual, there was a segment devoted to the next Olympics host. When the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, the organizers quickly moved to a highlight reel for the Paralympics, which begin on Aug. For pandemic-related reasons many segments that might normally have involved scores of costumed cavorters in the stadium were shown on video. It included the representative - drumming on a huge taiko. The entertainment included the familiar - dancers and jugglers. Flags were raised and lowered, anthems were sung, speeches were made and the flame was doused with everyone playing their parts as if nothing were wrong, with the Olympic movement or the world. President Thomas Bach did laud the athletes for providing “hope” during dark times.īut for the most part, the familiar elements played out as if nothing was different. Save the masks on the participants, the closing ceremony mostly avoided the coronavirus pandemic. An absence of cheering fans in the seats, an absence of parents embracing their medal-winning children, an absence of the buzz that takes over Olympic cities, which makes taxi drivers, hotel clerks and other residents want to eagerly talk handball or table tennis with each other or a visitor from another country. But on the ground there was an undeniable feeling of absence.
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