Hollywood actor Tom Cruise gave the 2024 Olympic Video games a dramatic ending with a memorable motion sequence that moved the eye from Paris to Los Angeles, the US metropolis that may host the subsequent version of the video games.
Because the Olympic flag was handed on from one metropolis to a different, Paris wrapped up the present with a glittering show of fireworks which have come to outline the closing of the video games in current editions.
Whereas the ceremony itself grabbed the eye on the ultimate day, the moments that may dwell lengthy within the reminiscence of followers got here throughout the video games’ action-packed two weeks.
Al Jazeera picks the highest 5 viral moments and speaking factors from Paris 2024 that took the world by storm:
GOAT Simone lives as much as pre-Olympic Bilesmania
Within the weeks constructing as much as Paris 2024, one athlete who dominated the headlines like no different was American gymnast Simone Biles.
Arguably the best gymnast of all time with 11 Olympic medals to her title, Biles made a return that garnered consideration after she abruptly pulled out of competitors on the Tokyo Olympics three years in the past.
From her starry leotard emblazoned with crystals to her jaw-dropping performances within the heats, she impressed Bilesmania that took over the video games.
Followers eagerly awaited her return to the limelight, and the world’s most adorned gymnast didn’t disappoint. The 27-year-old’s almost faultless routines within the girls’s group all-around closing on July 30 introduced the largest celebrities to Bercy Enviornment in Paris and helped Workforce USA bag the gold medal that they misplaced in Tokyo.
The self-proclaimed GOAT – Biles was seen carrying a necklace with a goat at its centre – went on to win gold within the particular person all-around and vault finals. She bagged silver in flooring workouts and did not qualify for the uneven bars closing.
The star capped off her stint in Tokyo by holding the Olympic flag throughout the closing ceremony because it was handed over from Paris to Los Angeles – the place Biles should flip up and steal the present as soon as extra.
11x Olympic medalist @Simone_Biles held the Olympic flag because it was handed over for @LA28 🇺🇸#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/2vtlNld4ct
— Workforce USA (@TeamUSA) August 11, 2024
Arms-in-pockets Turkish shooter’s no-frills strategy
It was laborious to overlook the aura of Turkey’s pistol shooter Yusuf Dikec. His hand-in-pocket taking pictures type not solely introduced him a group silver medal within the blended group 10-metre (33-foot) air pistol closing, it additionally shot the 51-year-old to immediate fame on social media.
Viral photographs confirmed Dikec taking pictures in a T-shirt with one hand in his pocket, a seemingly commonplace pair of glasses and an emotionless look on his face. He gave off guy-next-door vibes and social media was all for it.
The social media fame prompted Dikec to arrange an account on X, the place he invited the platform’s proprietor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, to Istanbul to debate the way forward for robots as shooters.
Nevertheless, Dikec’s greatest and long-lasting impression was that on different athletes, who posed in his trademark taking pictures type after profitable medals.
From record-breaking males’s pole vault gold medalist Armand Duplantis of Sweden to Australia’s girls’s pole vault champion Nina Kennedy and plenty of others, athletes far and extensive carried out the Dikec celebration throughout the closing week.
Congratulations Duplantis 🇸🇪🇹🇷 pic.twitter.com/VgtsuBC43L
— Yusuf Dikec (@yusufdikec) August 5, 2024
Gender controversy hits girls’s boxing
The second week of the video games noticed the ladies’s boxing competitors embroiled in an issue over the gender of two athletes – Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting.
It began with Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoning a match towards Khelif, strolling away from the competition to her nook – a particularly uncommon scene in Olympic boxing.
Debate then raged over the eligibility of Khelif and Lin, each of whom went on to win gold medals of their respective classes. Khelif smiled, danced and roared with delight as she turned the primary Algerian, Arab and African girl to win an Olympic boxing gold medal. The 25-year-old dominated the three-round welterweight combat and was introduced the winner in a unanimous determination by the judges.
Khelif adopted her win by filing a authorized criticism towards the social media platform X for harassment. The gold medal winner’s lawyer mentioned that she filed the formal criticism in France.
“The boxer Imane Khelif has determined to start a brand new combat, a combat for justice, dignity and honour,” Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi mentioned in an announcement as he introduced the criticism for “aggravated on-line harassment … [had been filed] to Paris prosecutors”.
“All that’s being mentioned about me on social media is immoral. I wish to change the minds of individuals world wide,” Khelif mentioned within the assertion.
People within the criticism have been described as “essential political figures” with extensive followings on X. The posts focusing on Khelif “exceeded 100 million views,” it added.
Chinese language gymnast learns medal-biting celebration on the rostrum
China’s Zhou Yaqin gained a silver medal within the girls’s stability beam inventive gymnastics closing, however turned higher identified for her antics off the competitors’s flooring.
Standing beside Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito – the gold and bronze medallists from Italy – on the rostrum, Zhou watched as the 2 gymnasts bit their medals. The 18-year-old’s amused expression modified to bewilderment earlier than she determined to mimic her fellow medal winners.
Zhou’s innocence and emotive response endeared her to followers on social media and plenty of termed it “the cutest second of the Olympics”. Whereas being interviewed on Chinese language media, Zhou was requested to “recreate the second” and he or she obliged by pretending to chew her silver medal.
Sifan Hassan receives marathon gold carrying hijab
The final observe and discipline occasion to be determined on the video games was the ladies’s marathon, the place Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands had a surprising dash end.
The once-Ethiopian asylum seeker capped an unbelievable journey by profitable three distance working medals, which additionally included bronze in 10,000 metres and 5,000 metres, within the area of six days. She ran a distance of 62.195km (38.6 miles) throughout the three races.
For a lot of of her followers, although, the icing on the cake got here when she climbed on the rostrum for the final medals presentation throughout the closing ceremony in Paris whereas carrying a hijab round her neck.
Social media posts identified the way it aptly wrapped up an Olympic Video games the place the host nation banned its feminine athletes from carrying the Muslim head overlaying.
How poetic and superbly apt that the ultimate particular person to take to the rostrum on the Closing Ceremony of the Paris Olympics is Sifan Hussan – in a hijab.
A strong visible after French Olympic athletes have been forbidden from carrying hijabs on the Video games. pic.twitter.com/7jO0t4uwqD
— Sue Anstiss MBE (@sueanstiss) August 11, 2024
