The Stade de France, which hosted athletics and rugby sevens during the Paris Games, was due to stage the Olympic closing ceremony on a Sunday evening. Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dogg were lined up for it, the BBC reported in its preview. The show was scheduled to run from 20:00 BST to 22:30.
The handover to Los Angeles
Organisers of LA28 confirmed that Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dogg, all Californians, would take part in the official handover to the next hosts at the end of the night. Snoop Dogg had been a prominent figure around the Games. The R&B singer H.E.R. was set to sing the US national anthem live in Paris.
The handover itself belonged to the traditional part of the programme. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, would pass the Olympic flag to Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles.
Tom Cruise was heavily rumoured to appear, possibly abseiling from the top of the stadium. Organisers kept quiet. The handover segment was the likeliest place for the film star to turn up, the BBC said.
A show called Records
Artistic director Thomas Jolly called the show “Records”. He promised a dream-like science-fiction journey through time, beginning with the origins of the Olympic Games and ending in a dystopian future where the Games have disappeared and must be reinvented. Performers, dancers and circus artists were to join the headline acts. The French groups Air and Phoenix were also expected to play.
The ceremony also had the usual set pieces. The medal ceremony for the women’s marathon was on the bill. So was the proclamation of the end of the Games by IOC president Thomas Bach, and the extinguishing of the Olympic flame, which was to be brought from the Tuileries, where the cauldron had been on display and visited by tens of thousands of fans.
Flagbearers and conditions
Bryony Page and Alex Yee carried the flag for Great Britain. Page, 33, won trampoline gold in Paris, completing her set of Olympic medals after silver in Rio 2016 and bronze in Tokyo. Antoine Dupont, who led France to rugby sevens gold, was France’s flagbearer. Swimmer Katie Ledecky, who won two golds in Paris to equal the record for most golds by a female Olympian, carried the US flag.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting were set to help carry their countries’ flags after winning gold, amid the ongoing row over their eligibility for the women’s division.
Unlike the rain-soaked opening ceremony on the Seine, this one was inside a stadium that is still open to the elements. No rain was forecast. Temperatures were expected to peak at 33C. The last event before the ceremony was the women’s basketball gold-medal match at Bercy Arena, due to start at 14:30 BST.
