Tokyo Olympics LIVE: Games brought to an end in closing ceremony as Paris 2024 welcomes handover

We’ll have plenty more reaction and analysis of the Tokyo Olympics over the next few days but for now, it’s time to say goodbye.

Thank you for following our coverage over the past two weeks, and bring on Paris 2024!

Tokyo handed the Olympic flag over to Paris as organisers breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the strangest Games in living memory.

Although not without its problems, most notably the absence of fans from venues in the Japanese capital, coronavirus has been a merciful sideshow to displays of sporting greatness.

Everyone involved will keep their fingers firmly crossed that the Olympics in three years’ time will be able to be held in normal circumstances.

Paris had to stage its show remotely, but it was a memorable spectacle, with La Marseillaise played by musicians across Paris and beyond, including French astronaut Thomas Pesquet in the International Space Station.

French athletes who had starred in Tokyo but were now back home were among those gathered in the Trocadero to watch, although plans to use the Eiffel Tower as a flag pole for the world’s largest flag were scuppered by the weather.

Great Britain’s sailing team finished top of the class in Tokyo with a superb haul of five medals, while there were also merits being handed out for success in swimming and boxing in particular.

The BMXers proved the unlikely saviours for British Cycling but there was a distinct sense of ‘could do better’ for the athletics brigade whilst rowing dallied with detention after a disappointing show.

As the Tokyo Olympics comes to an end, we grade how GB’s main sports performed at the Games.

Lauren Price and Galal Yafai both won gold medals in the final weekend of the extraordinary boxing tournament at the Tokyo Olympics.

The two gold medals mean that the 11 British boxers finished with a total of six: two bronzes, two silvers and the golds. The haul also means that Team GB finished top of the boxing medal table for the second time in three Olympics. It is also the best modern Olympics ever for British boxers, a ridiculous performance in many ways.

On the final morning, in the penultimate fight, Price was too slick, too fast and simply too good for China’s Li Qian; the final score was 5-0 to Price. It was the end of a decade of major tournaments, tough nights in exotic rings and a great passage through the darkest of years for the Welsh fighter.

Steve Bunce reports on a historic Olympics for Great Britain, which delivered right up until the final day.

Laura and Jason Kenny have taken their combined tally of Olympic gold medals to 12 during Tokyo 2020, cementing their positions as Great Britain’s most successful competitors at the Games. Madison success with Katie Archibald was Laura’s fifth Olympic title and preceded Jason’s final-day triumph in the keirin to take his personal golden haul to seven. With another three silvers between them, they top the ranks of their country’s female and male medallists respectively.

Team GB returned no positive Covid cases and matched their London 2012 medal tally in Tokyo in what officials rightly labelled ‘the greatest achievement in British Olympic history.’

It sits above staging a home Games three years after World War II, resisting government calls to boycott Moscow 1980 and delivering medals from millions of public pounds in 2012.

There is no Tokyo medal table equivalent for Covid tests but Team GB would be top, administering 20,000 tests in 40 days in Japan with not one single confirmed positive.

“It’s been against all odds and it’s been the miracle of Tokyo,” said Chef de Mission Mark England.

“Our medical team have been absolutely outstanding and we got our athletes safely onto the start line in a highly complex, high risk and challenging environment.

An innocuous question from a friend set Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands on her quest for triple gold at the Olympics, she explained on Sunday as she headed home with two golds and a bronze.

The Ethiopian-born Dutch runner won the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, and finished third in the 1,500m, in a hectic programme at the Tokyo Games and said all she wanted to do afterwards was sleep.

“I was so tired, I didn’t even dream about those medals,” she said in an interview on Dutch NOS television.

“It was especially nice when I woke up, because I had no more stress. I made it happen. Fantastic.”

She said the plan to run three different distances in Tokyo started a year ago as a joke.

“A friend of mine, who doesn’t understand athletics, said, ‘Why don’t you run three distances?’ At first I had to laugh, but then I thought, ‘nobody does that’. So I started training very hard.”

She kept her plans close to her chest and even when she got to Tokyo it was still not clear what her intentions were.

“I’m not afraid of anything, I just want to challenge myself, otherwise I find it boring. One distance is nothing, so I just wanted to try the triple.”

Reuters

The one-year delay to the Tokyo Olympics means an unusually short cycle to Paris 2024, with preparations in the French capital already well underway.

Established stars will mix with the latest band of up-and-comers as the Games continue to evolve with some new events guaranteed to catch the eye.

The Paris Games aims to be the first to reach a 50% split between male and female athletes, edging Tokyo which managed 48.8%. Paris will also be a marginally smaller Games - the number of athletes is expected to reduce by around 500 to 10,500, and the total number of events will go down by around 10.

Paris officials say the Games will “set a new standard for inclusive, gender-balanced and youth-centred games”. Key is the expansion of the so-called ‘urban’ programme, with break-dancing - known simply as ‘breaking’ for the purposes of the Olympic programme, making its Games debuts. Meanwhile there will no doubt be an emerging band of ever-younger hopefuls looking to skip onto the medal podium in skateboarding.

The Tokyo Olympics ends with a single word displayed at the national stadium: Arigato - thank you.

Thank you Tokyo, thank you Japan. The Olympic Games is officially over and what an incredible two weeks we’ve had.

The Olympic flame is slowly extinguished as the cauldron closes, and the Tokyo Games are officially over.

The Paralympic Games begin in two weeks’ time in Tokyo.