The ceremony was a celebration of the Games, with performances from singers and dancers as well as a show of fireworks.
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The International Paralympic Committee anthem, played by musicians Daniel Santiago, Pedro Martins and Mestrinho, marked the transition from Rio to Tokyo 2020.
Addressing the athletes, he thanked them for making the country proud by winning 12 medals in Rio Games which ended on Sunday.
While the night in Rio’s Maracana stadium featured a joyful extravaganza of music and dance, it was tinged with sadness after the tragic death of Iranian Para-cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad following a crash in Saturday’s C4-5 road race. Concerns over empty seats were not realised, with more than 2.1 million eventually tickets sold – second only to London 2012.
Great Britain enjoyed a superb and record-breaking summer at the 2016 Rio Paralympics as the nation’s athletes secured their biggest haul of gold medals since 1988.
A gold medal was scored by wheelchair fencer Andrei Pranevich.
This is the first Paralympics to be closed on the South American soil at Rio de Janeiro.
Fourth-placed Jin Zheng, who competes in the T11 category – for the most severe sight impairments – set a world record for her class, finishing in 3:19.46.
She persuaded British Cycling and British Athletics to allow her to double up, proving her sceptical coaches wrong, and it paid dividends.
Watching the Paralympic marathon along the seafront in Copacabana earlier, spectator Marcelo Augusto Miranda Costa said the Games had been “a moment of magic for the city”.
“I expected the temperature to go up, and the race went exactly the way I had imagined”.
“You can make the most of these things”. People can say about Russian Federation not being here or whatever, but there’s a lot of performances where even if Russian Federation would have been here, we’d still have had a massive amount of gold medals. I got the medals, but being able to spread a message is way more important than the medals.
Kevin O’Neill, CEO of Disability Sport NI, said: “Our athletes deserve all the credit for all the hard work and dedication that has led to these awesome results”.
Nigeria’s record-setting Paralympics athletes have returned to the country.
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Arms raised, Nelson’s Liam Malone celebrates winning one of his two gold medals at the Rio Paralympic Games. But while we know how to do it and we keep staying ahead of everybody, we can still stay world leaders.
