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Josh Ball

You have to hand it to the French, they don’t care what anyone thinks. After a truly awful opening ceremony two weeks ago, they follow it up with an interminable closing one.
Not for them a quick thanks and goodbye, no, no, another three-hour epic, if that’s the right word. Turgid would be another one, so would drivel, but you get the point.
Which is a shame, because the actual Olympics, the competitive action that is, ended with a truly stunning women’s basketball final between the USA and France that should have been everyone’s enduring memory.
If you’re just getting up, which I hope you are, here are the edited highlights, or lowlights depending on your point of view, of what happened while you were sleeping.
A seriously close call

Lost in all the talk about closing ceremonies and ties at the top of the medal table will be one of the most thrilling finishes to a game we have seen in a long time.
France were expected to be sacrificial lambs, handed over to be ritually slaughtered by a USA women’s basketball team that hadn’t lost a game since, well, forever.
Except no one told the hosts, or Gabby Williams, the Seattle Storm power forward who almost single-handedly wrecked a dynasty. Except she didn’t.
Up by 10 at one stage, France came within a whisker of forcing overtime, but Williams stepped just inside the three-point line before letting her shot go on the buzzer, and the USA won 67-66.
The Olympic day should have finished there. Flag handed to Los Angeles, let’s all go have a beer, or an Aperol Spritz, or whatever your poison. But they didn’t, and the closing ceremony rather ruined the atmosphere.
Interpretive dance
When I was at university, I shared a house with Phil, a drama student who when not hiding in his bedroom reading Proust spent hours insisting the late-night play on television wasn’t incomprehensible, the rest of us just weren’t cultured enough to understand its deeper meanings.
Watching the closing ceremony, you got the impression the organisers channelled a similar thought process.
Once the athletes had made their way into the stadium, the start of the show was about a golden voyager in a dystopian future – their words not mine – descending to the planet to rediscover the Olympics, chat with the goddess Nike, and rescue the rings, or something like that.
Anyway, much like modern art, where a pile of bricks can win a prize if you have the right spiel, this was more strange interpretive dance routine that might have earned a second-class degree at the local poly, than inspired artistic vision.
Chinese social media described the main character of the almost 30-minute segment as “the golden cockroach”, and those were the polite comments.
Phoenix sort of rising

Things almost picked up at the Stade de France with the emergence of French indie-rock band Phoenix, who we were told were from just down the road in Versailles.
They were apparently joined by surprise guests. So much of a surprise that the French rapper, the blonde singer and the mysterious guitarist in a hood who could actually play were completely unrecognisable to most.
The entire set also seemed to suffer in the sound engineering department. The band looked as though they had been transplanted from the 1980s, when television shows were notorious for having musicians pretend to sing and play their instruments to pre-recorded tracks.
Platitudes, clichés, yawn
The speeches. Please save us from the speeches of self-important administrators and politicians.
First up, Tony Estanguet, president of the organising committee of the Games, which obviously were “unique, special and the best ever”, at least until the next time.
“From one day to the next, the whole of France became Olympic,” he said, in another example of a sentence no one has ever heard before.
One day, an official is going to say something actually worth listening to, or actually important. But then they wouldn’t be part of the Olympic movement, so we get the same speech from Athens, to Beijing, to London, Rio, Tokyo and now Paris.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach hit all the high notes too with a speech he probably just changes the name of the city in every four years.
Culture of peace, respect, human diversity all made an appearance, although his writer gets nul points for the “Seine-sational Games” line, especially as Bach isn’t close to being funny enough to deliver it effectively.
From Paris to LA

Tom Cruise zip-lining in from the roof of the Stade de France was almost inevitable once the Olympic flag had been handed over from Paris to LA, but his appearance certainly added star power to a ceremony desperately needing it.
If there was any doubt as to the direction the Games will take over the next four years, they were quickly dispelled by the sight of Cruise leaving the stadium on a motorbike with the flag, accompanied by a Red Hot Chili Peppers soundtrack, to be next seen jumping out of a plane to deliver it to Hollywood via US Olympians Kate Courtney, Michael Johnson and Jagger Eaton.
The promised appearances by the Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Snoop Dogg did materialise, even if they were all on pre-recorded video.
Slick production at the end almost saved the entire show, but then Bach made another appearance to solemnly declare a Games we all stopped caring about two hours before closed, and reminded us that was three hours of our lives we were never getting back.


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Paris 2024 Olympic Games

While you were sleeping: golden cockroach, interpretive dance, Tom Cruise close Olympics

The Golden Voyager stands atop a pile of masked dancers in a performance during the closing ceremony. Photo: Reuters

Gabby Williams (15) of France makes a basket as the clock hits zero in the women’s basketball final. Photo: AP

Phoenix perform in the Stade de France during the ceremony. Photo: Reuters

Tom Cruise rides his motorbike with the Olympic flag attached near the end of the closing ceremony. Photo: AP

Paris reluctantly says goodbye to Olympics, Tom Cruise saves closing party

Actor Tom Cruise jumps from the roof of the Stade de France during the closing ceremony. Photo: Reuters

Karen Bass becomes the first black, woman mayor to receive the Olympic flag at a closing ceremony. Photo: Reuters

A closing ceremony show drew a lukewarm response from live and television viewers. Photo: Xinhua

Paris Olympics: China’s best overseas Games and rivalry with US set scene for LA in 2028

China’s Li Wenwen celebrates gold in the women’s +81kg weightlifting on the final day of the Games. Photo: dpa

Pan Zhanle (left) inspired China to gold in swimming’s men’s 4x100m medley relay. Photo: Reuters

Hong Kong’s Cheung Ka-long won gold to repeat his exploits in Tokyo in 2021. Photo: AP

Wu Yanni, in the 100m hurdles, typified China’s showing in track and field. Photo: Xinhua

Paris Olympics: tears for Hong Kong cyclist Ceci Lee – ‘I don’t know what I was doing’

Ceci Lee competing in the Olympic omnium. Photo: SF&OC

Ceci Lee delivered a passive performance in Paris. Photo: SF&OC

The Hongkonger hangs back in the bunch. Photo: SF&OC

Sport

Paris Olympics 2024

The Buzz

France coming agonisingly short of winning women’s basketball gold should have been enduring memory of the Games – organisers had other ideas


France coming agonisingly short of winning women’s basketball gold should have been the enduring memory of the Games – organisers had other ideas.


Tom Cruise

While you were sleeping