This was after the Olympic flag was lowered and handed over to the representative of Tokyo 2020, the next host of the Games.
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11,303 athletes from 206 nations and a refugee team competed at the Rio Olympics.
The emergence of prime minster Shinzo Abe from a large green pipe dressed in the guise of 1980s video game icon Super Mario did indicate Tokyo 2020 has inherited Rio’s admirable sense of self-deprecation.
High winds buffeted the Maracana, power briefly went out in the upper part of the stadium, and rain drenched performers and athletes as they entered the ceremony, many with medals hanging around their necks.
Just a few hours earlier, the USA basketball squad won the last gold of the Games, boosting their country’s place on top of the medals table.
Highlights included human formations of iconic Rio landmarks Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain.
Accompanied by fireworks, the countdown to the start of the 13-segment show honoured “father of aviation” Santos Dumont, creator of first controllable aircraft with an engine as he announced the “party to begin”.
Britain’s athletes wore shoes with soles that lit up in changing colors of red, white and blue, while Tongan taekwondo athlete Pita Taufatofua danced onstage in a grass skirt as a DJ performed, reprising a moment that captured attention when he carried the flag for his country during the opening ceremony. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike accepted the flag.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach: “Brazil we love you, thank you for your warm hospitality”. Over the last 16 days a united Brazil inspired the world, in hard times for all of us, with its irresistible joy of life. You gave many reasons to be proud. “In accordance with tradition, I call upon the youth of the world to assemble in four years time in Tokyo, Japan to celebrate the Games of the 32nd Olympiad”, Bach said to the huge applause of the packed gathering at the iconic Maracana Stadium on Sunday night.
“These were a marvellous Olympic Games in a marvellous city”. They are leaving a unique legacy for many generations to come.
Bach was accompanied by Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the president of the Rio 2016 Organising Committee. “Rio has delivered history”. Bolt’s tally of Olympic medals, therefore, is nine gold medals over nine events in three successive years.
Team GB’s most successful sport once again with 12 medals, six of them gold, after domination in the velodrome.
Jason Kenny and Laura Trott will marry in September as the owners of 10 gold medals, while Sir Bradley Wiggins became the most decorated British Olympian with his eighth medal.
Gold medal winners among the flag bearers from other nations included 4ft 9in gymnastics superstar Simone Biles from the United States, and South African runner Caster Semenya.
A gold and a silver from both the slalom and the sprint competitions was a fine return and bang in the middle of UK Sport’s medal target range.
Competitors from Bahrain, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Vietnam and Tajikistan, too, won their first Olympic titles. All that converged for at the Rio Olympics closing ceremony as Brazil marked goodbye to sixteen days of drama, both on and off the field.
OK, two bronze medals clearly does not equate to the gold-medal winning feats elsewhere, but if you want cheap medals, shooting’s the thing.
It came in front of 78,000 fans in the Maracana, two years after Germany thrashed hosts Brazil 7-1 in the 2014 World Cup semi-finals.
Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps won his 23rd gold medal in the 4x100m medley relay in Rio. “United in our diversity, we are stronger”, Bach said. Gold, silver, bronze. The atmosphere has been brilliant. Then there was not an empty seat.
Controversial decisions marred the boxing tournament.
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Russian swimmer Yuliya Efimova, who had been banned for doping, was repeatedly booed. Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar went into Rio as the first female Indian gymnast to qualify for the Olympics, and went onto the final to become the first Indian gymnast to do so.
