The Paralympics closed on Sunday with an enormous music-fueled social gathering as chief Paris 2024 organizer Tony Estanguet mentioned the Video games and the Olympics had created a “historic summer season”.
The Paralympic flame and cauldron have been extinguished earlier than a live performance that includes one of the best of French digital music capped off proceedings at a packed Stade de France. Greater than 4,400 athletes from 168 Paralympic delegations partied regardless of persistent rain.
Estanguet mentioned the closing ceremony marked the tip of six weeks of Olympic and Paralympic fervor within the Metropolis of Mild. The previous Olympic gold medal-winning canoeist mentioned that interval would stay “etched in folks’s reminiscences”.
“This summer season, France had a date with historical past, and the nation confirmed up,” he mentioned. “This summer season when folks talked to one another, this summer season when France was completely satisfied,” mentioned Estanguet, referring to how France had been left deeply divided by snap elections simply weeks earlier than the Olympics opened.
The following Paralympics will happen in Los Angeles in 2028. Within the official handover, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo handed the Paralympic flag to Worldwide Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons, who gave it to Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass.
Broadway star Ali Stoker then sang the American nationwide anthem earlier than a movie was proven of a band acting on a Californian seaside as skate boarders and wheelchair athletes carried out tips.
Regardless of preliminary fears about ticket gross sales, the Paralympics occurred in primarily full stadiums, benefiting from the feelgood issue from the extremely profitable Olympics which ended on August 11. Parsons mentioned the Paris Paralympics had proven that “change begins with sport”.
The extent of the game in Paris, the group and the gender parity of the rivals had set a “benchmark” for future Paralympics, he mentioned. The hour-long digital live performance was kicked off by composer Victor Le Masne as LED bracelets worn by the gang and athletes on the sector lit up the stadium.
The 24-artist present with highlights together with French synthesizer legend Jean-Michel Jarre, Cassius, Busy P and Kungs was rounded off in type by DJ Martin Solveig, who completed his set with 2010 hit “Hiya” after which Daft Punk’s “One Extra Time”.
China’s dominance
China completed prime of the medals desk in Paris, as they’ve at each Paralympics since Athens in 2004. That they had 94 golds, adopted by Britain with 49 and the USA with 36.
Ukraine’s athletes overcame the formidable obstacles posed by their nation’s struggle with Russia to complete in seventh place with 22 golds and host nation France have been eighth with 19 golds.
In amputee monitor athletes Hunter Woodhall and 19-year-old Ezra Frech, the USA have discovered charismatic faces who’re positive to play a outstanding function within the buildup to LA2028. On the ultimate day of competitors, Switzerland gained each Paralympic wheelchair marathons whereas the Netherlands secured back-to-back ladies’s wheelchair basketball titles, denying the USA.
Early within the morning, Catherine Debrunner propelled her racing wheelchair by way of the streets of Paris to win the ladies’s marathon. The 29-year-old Swiss athlete added to the 4 gold medals she has already gained on the monitor at these Video games, starting from the 400 meters to the 5,000m.
Marcel Hug, 38, made up for a disappointing Video games on the monitor by dominating the lads’s wheelchair marathon, ending three minutes and 40 seconds forward of Hua Jin of China. The Netherlands scored a convincing 63-49 win in opposition to the USA to retain the ladies’s wheelchair basketball title they gained at Tokyo 2020.
The Individuals should wait till 2028 on house soil earlier than making an attempt to win a title that their males secured for a 3rd Video games in a row on Saturday. The USA ladies’s final title got here on the 2016 Rio Video games.