France bids farewell to Paris Olympics

The curtain came down on Paris’ feel-good summer with a grand parade of French athletes on the Champs Elysees on Saturday after the country threw one last party to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Parade of Champions included 460 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including 120 Paris medallists. About 70,000 spectators lined up on the parade’s route on the French capital’s famed avenue that ended on a ring-shaped stage around the Arc de Triomphe monument. Hundreds of the Games’ volunteers, Olympic and Paralympic representatives and city officials also attended.

Organizers delivered a celebration of French sport on par with the spectacular and audacious opening and closing of the July 26-Aug. 11 Olympics and the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympic ceremonies.

“Among us, we call it the 5th ceremony,” Thierry Reboul, the director of ceremonies, told French media. “We tried to include the same elements to this show as we did to the four ceremonies this summer: surprise, emotion and sharing.”

President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister, Michel Barnier, also attended. During the ceremony, Macron decorated with state honours 120 French Olympians, who had medalled in Paris, including the star swimmer and judoka, Leon Marchand and Teddy Riner. In all, 187 French athletes were bestowed with the Legion of Honour or the National Order of Merit on Saturday, but not all participated in the parade.

Macron’s celebration of the Olympic spirit that he said has produced “national harmony” came against the backdrop of a harsh political reality and a deeply divided society following an inconclusive legislative elections in July, just before the start of the Paris Games.

Faced with a hung parliament, social tensions and ballooning debt, Macron earlier this month appointed Barnier — a veteran conservative and the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator — to form a new government.

Macron’s decision caused fury in the left-wing coalition that won the most seats in the National Assembly, but not enough to govern alone, leaving France’s powerful lower house of parliament with no party holding a majority.

Barnier said he will present his ministers next week. The New Popular Front coalition vowed protests and censure against Macron and the new government, insisting that the president has dismissed the popular vote that gave the leftist alliance the mandate to govern.