The Paris Paralympics got here to an in depth on Sunday with Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, saying the Paralympics and Olympics created a “historic summer time.”
Talking on the Stade de France in entrance of round 4,400 athletes from 168 Paralympic delegations, Estanguet stated the closing ceremony marked the tip of six weeks of Olympic and Paralympic fervor within the Metropolis of Mild.
Estanguet stated they might stay “etched in individuals’s reminiscences.”
“This summer time, France had a date with historical past, and the nation confirmed up,” he stated.
“This summer time when individuals talked to one another, this summer time when France was completely happy,” the previous Olympic canoeist stated, referring to how France was deeply divided by snap elections simply weeks earlier than the Olympics opened.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo handed the Paralympic flag to Worldwide Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons, who gave it to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Los Angeles will host the Video games in 2028.
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 methods.
Regardless of preliminary fears about ticket gross sales, the Paralympics occurred in largely full stadiums, benefiting from the feel-good issue of the extremely profitable Olympics, which ended on Aug. 11.
Parsons stated the Paris Paralympics had proven that “change begins with sport.”
The motion in Paris and the group and gender parity of the rivals set new requirements for the Paralympics, he stated.
Each Paris 2024 symbols had been extinguished earlier than a vibrant digital live performance on the Stade de France area.
It was kicked off by Victor Le Masne as LED bracelets worn by the group and athletes on the sphere lit up the world for greater than an hour.
The 24-artist present with highlights similar to Jean-Michel Jarre, Cassius, Busy P and Kungs was led to model by icon Martin Solveig, who completed his set with 2010 hit “Good day” after which Daft Punk’s “One Extra Time.”
In the meantime, the cauldron housing the Paralympic flame, within the type of the bottom of a sizzling air balloon, which has risen into the air each night, was unable to make its closing journey skyward from the Tuileries Gardens on Sunday due to excessive winds and rain, organizers stated.
China completed on prime of the medal desk in Paris, because it has for each Paralympics since Athens in 2004. The Chinese language had 94 golds, adopted by Britain with 49 and america with 36.
Japan completed tenth with 14 golds, 10 silvers and 17 bronze medals.
Ukraine’s athletes overcame the appreciable obstacles posed by the conflict with Russia to complete in seventh place with 22 golds, and host nation France was eighth with 19.
On the ultimate day of competitors, Switzerland received each Paralympic wheelchair marathons, whereas the Netherlands secured back-to-back girls’s wheelchair basketball titles.
Catherine Debrunner propelled her racing wheelchair by means of the autumnal chill within the streets of Paris early Sunday morning to win the ladies’s marathon.
The 29-year-old Swiss athlete added to the 4 gold medals she had already received on the observe at these Video games. Debrunner claimed gold within the 400- and 800-meter races within the T53 classification and within the 1,500 and 5,000 within the T54 classification, with a silver within the T53 100 thrown in for good measure.
Marcel Hug, 38, made up for a disappointing Paralympics by dominating the lads’s wheelchair marathon, ending 3 minutes, 40 seconds forward of Hua Jin of China.
A minute’s silence was held after one of many girls’s marathons in reminiscence of Rebecca Cheptegei, the Ugandan Olympic marathon runner who died this week after being set on hearth by her associate. Cheptegei had completed forty fourth within the girls’s marathon on Aug. 11.
The Netherlands scored a convincing 63-49 win towards america to retain the ladies’s wheelchair basketball title it received on the Tokyo Video games.
The People should wait till 2028 earlier than making an attempt to win the title that their males secured for a 3rd Video games in a row on Saturday. The US girls’s final title got here on the 2016 Rio Video games.
