Hollywood actor Tom Cruise gave the 2024 Olympic Video games a dramatic finishing with a memorable motion line that moved the eye from Paris to Los Angeles, the United States town that may host the subsequent version of the video games.
Because the Olympic flag was once handed on from one town to any other, Paris wrapped up the display with a glittering show of fireworks that experience come to outline the endmost of the video games in contemporary editions.
Age the rite itself grabbed the eye at the ultimate generation, the moments that may reside lengthy within the reminiscence of enthusiasts got here throughout the video games’ action-packed two weeks.
Al Jazeera alternatives the lead 5 viral moments and speaking issues from Paris 2024 that took the arena via hurricane:
GOAT Simone lives as much as pre-Olympic Bilesmania
Within the weeks construction as much as Paris 2024, one athlete who ruled the headlines like incorrect alternative was once American gymnast Simone Biles.
Arguably the best gymnast of all moment with 11 Olympic medals to her title, Biles made a go back that garnered consideration upcoming she swiftly pulled out of pageant on the Tokyo Olympics 3 years in the past.
From her starry leotard emblazoned with crystals to her jaw-dropping performances within the heats, she impressed Bilesmania that took over the video games.
Fanatics gladly awaited her go back to the limelight, and the arena’s maximum adorned gymnast didn’t disappoint. The 27-year-old’s just about faultless routines within the girls’s group all-around ultimate on July 30 introduced the most important celebrities to Bercy Area in Paris and helped Workforce USA bag the gold medal that they misplaced in Tokyo.
The self-proclaimed GOAT – Biles was once evident dressed in a necklace with a goat at its centre – went directly to win gold within the person all-around and warehouse finals. She bagged silver in flooring workout routines and did not qualify for the asymmetric bars ultimate.
The famous person capped off her stint in Tokyo via maintaining the Olympic flag throughout the endmost rite because it was once passed over from Paris to Los Angeles – the place Biles would possibly nonetheless flip up and thieve the display all over again.
11x Olympic medalist @Simone_Biles held the Olympic flag because it was once passed over for @LA28 🇺🇸#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/2vtlNld4ct
— Workforce USA (@TeamUSA) August 11, 2024
Palms-in-pockets Turkish shooter’s no-frills manner
It was once dry to leave out the air of secrecy of Turkey’s pistol shooter Yusuf Dikec. His hand-in-pocket taking pictures taste no longer handiest introduced him a group silver medal within the combined group 10-metre (33-foot) breeze pistol ultimate, it additionally shot the 51-year-old to rapid status on social media.
Viral pictures confirmed Dikec taking pictures in a T-shirt with one hand in his patch, a reputedly usual pair of glasses and an emotionless glance on his face. He gave off guy-next-door vibes and social media was once all in favour of it.
The social media status triggered Dikec to arrange an account on X, the place he invited the platform’s proprietor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, to Istanbul to speak about the pace of robots as shooters.
Alternatively, Dikec’s largest and long-lasting have an effect on was once that on alternative athletes, who posed in his trademark taking pictures taste upcoming profitable medals.
From record-breaking males’s pole warehouse gold medalist Armand Duplantis of Sweden to Australia’s girls’s pole warehouse champion Nina Kennedy and plenty of others, athletes all over the place carried out the Dikec birthday party throughout the general life.
Congratulations Duplantis 🇸🇪🇹🇷 pic.twitter.com/VgtsuBC43L
— Yusuf Dikec (@yusufdikec) August 5, 2024
Gender controversy hits girls’s boxing
The second one life of the video games noticed the ladies’s boxing pageant embroiled in an argument over the gender of 2 athletes – Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting.
It began with Italian boxer Angela Carini leaving behind a fit towards Khelif, strolling clear of the competition to her nook – an especially uncommon scene in Olympic boxing.
Debate nearest raged over the eligibility of Khelif and Lin, either one of whom went directly to win gold medals of their respective divisions. Khelif smiled, danced and roared with pleasure as she was the primary Algerian, Arab and African lady to win an Olympic boxing gold medal. The 25-year-old ruled the three-round welterweight struggle and was once introduced the winner in a unanimous choice via the judges.
Khelif adopted her win via submitting a prison grievance towards the social media platform X for harassment. The gold medal winner’s legal professional stated that she filed the formal grievance in France.
“The boxer Imane Khelif has decided to begin a new fight, a fight for justice, dignity and honour,” Khelif’s legal professional Nabil Boudi stated in a commentary as he introduced the grievance for “aggravated online harassment … [had been filed] to Paris prosecutors”.
“All that is being said about me on social media is immoral. I want to change the minds of people around the world,” Khelif stated within the commentary.
Folks within the grievance have been described as “important political figures” with vast followings on X. The posts focused on Khelif “exceeded 100 million views,” it added.
Chinese language gymnast learns medal-biting birthday party at the podium
China’s Zhou Yaqin gained a silver medal within the girls’s steadiness beam creative gymnastics ultimate, however was higher identified for her antics off the contest’s flooring.
Status beside Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito – the gold and bronze medallists from Italy – at the podium, Zhou watched as the 2 gymnasts bit their medals. The 18-year-old’s amused tone modified to bewilderment prior to she determined to mimic her fellow medal winners.
Zhou’s innocence and emotive response endeared her to enthusiasts on social media and plenty of termed it “the cutest moment of the Olympics”. Age being interviewed on Chinese language media, Zhou was once requested to “recreate the moment” and she or he obliged via pretending to chunk her silver medal.
Sifan Hassan receives marathon gold dressed in hijab
The ultimate monitor and farmland match to be determined on the video games was once the ladies’s marathon, the place Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands had a superb dash end.
The once-Ethiopian asylum seeker capped an implausible exit via profitable 3 distance working medals, which additionally incorporated bronze in 10,000 metres and 5,000 metres, within the area of six days. She ran a distance of 62.195km (38.6 miles) throughout the 3 races.
For lots of of her enthusiasts, despite the fact that, the icing at the cake got here when she climbed at the podium for the ultimate medals presentation throughout the endmost rite in Paris generation dressed in a hijab round her neck.
Social media posts identified the way it aptly wrapped up an Olympic Video games the place the host nation cancelled its feminine athletes from dressed in the Muslim head masking.
How poetic and wonderfully apt that the general individual to speed to the rostrum on the Terminating Rite of the Paris Olympics is Sifan Hussan – in a hijab.
A formidable optical upcoming French Olympic athletes have been banned from dressed in hijabs on the Video games. pic.twitter.com/7jO0t4uwqD
— Sue Anstiss MBE (@sueanstiss) August 11, 2024