Italy throws farewell party, passes torch to France

VERONA, Italy — The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday with a closing ceremony paying tribute to Italian dance and music inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly midway between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games in Olympic history.

Some 1,500 Olympians filed into the arena waving small national flags to a rousing medley of Italian pop hits from the 20th century as the crowd sang along, taking their seats in the stone arena in places marked by green, red and white lights for the Italian flag.

As the twin Olympic cauldrons in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished, International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry declared the 2026 Games over.

“You delivered a new kind of Winter Games, and you set a new, very high standard for the future,” Coventry said.

A total of 116 medal events have been held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition.

The 2½-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony cast, including Italian singer Achille Lauro, but also long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates within the amphitheater’s tunnels.

On stage, Madama Butterfly in a bright pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while 17th century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from “La Traviata,” a nod to the arena’s long history as the venue for a summer opera festival.

The opera characters, led by the jester Rigoletto, spilled out into the piazza outside, mixing with the bemused athletes who were flag-bearers for their countries, some of whom pulled out their phones to film.

In a key moment, the Olympic flame encased in a Venetian glass vessel was carried into the Arena by Italian gold medalists from the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The Olympic rings illuminated in white appeared high on the stone stairs behind the stage, flanked by national flags, when one raised the flame in the center of the stage.

This is the first Games for Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, who watched the ceremony alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Some 12,000 spectators joined the athletes and officials for the closing ceremony, which was a much more intimate affair than the opening ceremony starring Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, attended by more than 60,000 people.

One of the key moments of the ceremony came when the Olympic flag was handed over to the next Winter Games host nation, France, and its flag was raised next to Italy’s and Greece’s.

The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of 22,000 square kilometers (8,500 square miles), from ice sports in Milan to biathlon in Anterselva on the Austrian border, snowboarding and men’s downhill in Valtellina on the Swiss border, cross-country skiing in the Val di Fiemme north of Verona and women’s downhill, curling and sliding sports in co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo.

It’s a model that will remain for future Games, to avoid the expense of building new facilities. The 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held abroad in a venue to be decided.

The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames being extinguished at the unprecedented two caldrons in Milan and Cortina, which was viewed via video link. A light show substituted fireworks, which are not allowed in Verona, to protect animals from being disturbed.

The Milan Cortina Paralympics’ opening ceremony will also take place in the Verona Arena on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.