LIVE

Paris Olympics: after star-studded LA handover, Games declared closed – as it happened

Athletes gather in Stade de France for music and speeches before China’s Sun Yingsha helps swimmer Leon Marchand extinguish Olympic flame

99+

Tom Cruise carries the Olympic flag during the closing ceremony at the Stade de France. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 5:29pm, 11 Aug 2024Updated: 8:27am, 12 Aug 2024

0 New Update

Introduction

This live blog has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Download our app to get faster notifications and 14 days of unlimited access.

The Olympics were slowly winding down the competition side of things and then began building up to the closing ceremony, which if you were in Hong Kong started at 3am on Monday.

Before that there were several gold medals to hand out, including in weightlifting and women’s basketball, and all eyes were on China and the USA to see who finished top of the table.

Hong Kong were still involved as well, with cyclist Ceci Lee Sze-wing competing in the women’s omnium.

We had all the details of the last action and the ceremony of what has been a truly enthralling 33rd Olympiad.

More from our coverage:

- Hongkonger Ceci Lee set for ‘challenge of her life’ in Olympic Games velodrome

- Diving champion Cao Yuan backs China to fend off US in Olympic medal scrap

- While you were sleeping: China hit 39 gold, medal race goes down to wire in Paris

- How to eat like Olympic champions: Kong, Djokovic, Zheng, Quan share their tips

Reporting by Mike Chan and Paul McNamara in Paris, and Josh Ball, Ira Gorawara, Meredith Chen, Sylvia Ma, Angeline Jiang, Lars Hamer, Andrew Richardson and Tom Bell in Hong Kong