Female Athletes in Canada Shine Bright, Outperforming Male Counterparts! Go Girls!

OLYMPIC REPORT with George Le Gresley

This year’s games are over and ended the year of parity with a dramatic women’s marathon race. As far as Canada’s performance, the athletes outdid their previous summer games performance with 27 medals. We can say that this year, the female athletes rocked in the pool and field events out medaling the male athletes. You go girls. The closing ceremony was moved inland to the main stadium and was less controversial and cheeky than the opening ceremony along the Seine, but rather drenched with symbolism telling a story of how the Olympics began. As in all closing ceremonies, the athletes and volunteers marched in to be recognized, with Summer McIntosh and Ethan Kratzberg being the flag bearers and speeches by dignitaries.

Then the show begins with a being, that looked like a fly or some other insect totally in a gold outfit, coming down from heaven who encounters Greek Gods like Paris.

Team Canada’s Malindi Elmore competes in women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France on Sunday, August 11, 2024. Photo by Kevin Light/COC

Then five rings appear on stage with characters all totally dressed in black, doing Cirque de Soleil dancing and acrobatic moves A piano and its player dressed in long strips of plastic black strips soar (Sir Elton inspired this no doubt) to the top of the stadium, playing a rousing piano tune. One by one, the rings rise to the sky to form the well-known five interlocking rings that symbolize the Olympic games. (This description reminds me of one of my many English book reports that I barely passed for not recognizing the many symbolic themes of novels like The Tin Flute!).

Then the concert began with an electro-house artist Kavinsky, French Indie Pop band Phoenix, and a band named Air, all artists that weren’t on my 70’s playlist, but were entertaining. Next on the agenda was Paris passing the flag to Los Angeles, the 2028 host of the summer games. To honor the country hosting the 2028 games, H.E.R. sang the USA anthem playing some impressive Jimi Hendrix licks on her guitar

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Then from the top of the stadium, out comes Tom Cruise from the sky, with the theme from Mission Impossible I thought the James Bond entrance at the London games was more impressive, but I digress

Tom grabs the Olympic flag from the mayor of L.A. and dives into the stage like a stunt that Taylor Swift does in her Eras stage show. Unlike T.S., who changes into a new costume, T.C. jumps onto a motorcycle with the Olympic flag waving from his bike driving like a madman through the streets of Paris finally to an airfield driving up the ramp of a cargo airplane. The vignette continues as the plane, no doubt faster than a Concord (kids that was a passenger plane that flew almost twice the speed of sound), has TC parachuting to the tune Californication and adding to “O’s” to the famous Hollywood sign to make it look like the Olympic Rings! Tres Hollywood!

The next stop was a California beach party with a concert by “The Red Hot Chilli Peppers”, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Incidentally if you watched the games on NBC, Snoop Dogg was everywhere at the Olympic venues. This ended the closing ceremony show, grander than a Super Bowl

Halftime show. France pulled off a Games that was safe, fun, dramatic and any other positive adjective you can think of

Thankfully the Olympics are done and we can have fun watching and writing about high school sports starting up in a few weeks. Cheers to the athletes et merci encore Paris et France.