Plans to fly giant Olympic flag from Eiffel Tower abandoned due to strong winds as Tokyo Games end
Watch: France celebrates Olympic handover with stunning Paris flyby
Plans to fly a giant Olympic flag from the Eiffel Tower were abandoned due to strong winds as the Tokyo Games ended.
The Paris 2024 Olympics organising committee had hoped to unfurl "the biggest flag ever flown", as part of the handover from Tokyo to the French capital.
But its plans were scuppered because of the weather and spectators had to make do with musical performances and a stunning air show.
Several thousand people were seen waving the tricolour flag thronged into a fan zone across the river from the Eiffel Tower.
In Tokyo, cyclist Laura Kenny had been selected as Great Britain’s flag bearer for the closing ceremony.
Kenny was honoured to hold the UK flag after claiming her fifth Olympic title and becoming the first British woman to win gold at three successive games.
She won the women's Madison alongside Katie Archibald.
Kenny said: "The past 18 months have been tough for everyone, and I really hope me and my Team GB team-mates have given the nation something to celebrate.
"It hasn’t quite sunk in that I am now Britain’s most successful female athlete, all I know is that I’ve worked so hard to be here and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family, friends and everyone at British Cycling."
Athletes got a surreal glimpse of everyday Tokyo life when the closing ceremony was briefly transformed into a park with grass, buskers and BMX riders in a valediction after weeks spent under the regime of a pandemic Games.
Performers danced, skipped and played soccer, mingling and waving to athletes, who gathered closely together on the grass.
Organisers said the scene was meant so they could "experience Tokyo", a poignant nod to the fact that many spent their time at the Games cooped up in rooms or competing in venues.
When Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo received the flag from IOC president Thomas Bach during the closing ceremony, another flag was meant to be raised from the Eiffel Tower.
Paris Games chief Tony Estanguet said: "We waited an extra year for this moment (after Tokyo 2020 Games were postponed due to the pandemic).
"The excitement is very strong. We want to start with a world record. It's the biggest flag every raised, ever.
"It's more or less the equivalent of a football field. So it's true that it will be big. It will be the first world record of Paris 2024 since it would be the biggest flag ever raised."
"We have this luck to have 'the most beautiful flag bearer in the world' with the Eiffel Tower. So our challenge is to be able to raise this flag, and fly this flag in Paris on the Eiffel Tower."
Paris, which will host the Games exactly 100 years after last organising the Olympics in 1924, will also stage a tour of the country for the Olympic flag as it prepares for the first European summer Olympics since London 2012.
Paris mayor Hidalgo added: "The Olympic flag will make a tour of France.
"It symbolises the Olympic values and we want to share it.
"It arrives in Paris and it will not be stored away from view of the citizens who whom it belongs.”
Watch: Team GB collect 20 gold medals
