London Olympic last day ceremony photos

 

Colour, music, spice

Curtains fall on the Olympics, with a display of grandeur that was seldom seen in the past

London: The sometimes spectacular, and often quirky and surprising opening ceremony of the Olympic Games had been matched for craziness and bizarre sights in the closing ceremony at the Olympic Stadium, but with one big difference — it was even more madly bonkers. Thousands of athletes on Sunday night took the opportunity to party like mad, to a soundtrack supplied by top British artists. The five-strong girl-band ‘The Spice Girls’ reformed for the evening and were seen whizzing around the stadium on the top of black London taxis, belting out one of their hits. The most surreal moment of a truly mad evening was the appearance of Monty Python star Eric Idle singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ — often sung by defeated sports fans to cheer themselves up — complete with roller-skating nuns, morris dancers, dancing Roman centurions, frantic Indian Bhangra dancers and a kilted-bagpipe band. The athletes flooded into the stadium from all sides to fill up parts of a giant union flag on the stadium floor, designed by British artist Damien Hirst. They partied to a ‘Symphony of British Music’, showcasing an hour of great British hits, starting with film of John Lennon, the Beatle murdered in New York in 1980, singing his idealistic hit ‘Imagine’ as a giant replica of his face was created in the center of the stadium. The music brought out not just the breadth of British music, but also an underlying surreality, particularly with a Beatle’s track ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ featuring dancing walruses and eggmen (from the lyrics of the song), and D J Fatboy Slim whose appearance also heralded the arrival of the world’s largest transparent plastic octopus, and whose eight limbs twitched disturbingly to the music. Earlier, Stomp, the physical theatre group whose show has been running in the West End for 20 years, using giant models of London sights such as the London Eye, Tower Bridge, as percussion instruments. Hundreds of lycra-clad children and teenagers pulled themselves into unlikely poses as the Beatles hit ‘A Day in the Life’ played. Then the audience in the stadium and millions watching on TV and the Internet saw an actor playing Sir Winston Churchill pop out of the peeled top of the Big Ben tower, quoting the Shakespeare lines from ‘The Tempest’ heard in the opening ceremony, “Be not afeard, this isle is full of noises”. Music in this early segment (and also later in the show) was, in effect, the world’s most expensive karaoke concert, with the audience in the stadium — mostly Brits — knowing the words to the songs and joining in. The bands and artists had created the hit music, an eclectic and very British mix of pop and rock tunes from the past 50 years. More precisely it was not just British but very London, with music by artists from London — like the 1980s ska band Madness — or songs about London — like the Pet Shop Boys with their hit ‘West End Girls’. Madness reprised ‘Our House’, which they had performed just two months earlier on top of Buckingham Palace as part of the concert to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. They were followed by the surrealistic sight of the Band of the Brigade of Guards — the Queen’s personal ‘i-pod’ — playing Blur’s ‘Parklife’, a 90s Britpop hit whose ironic and droll humour is a world away from the apparent formality of the scarlet-tunic clad musicians. In the more formal, and more sane, parts of the evening Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presented the winners medals for the men’s marathon, and later took possession of the Olympic flag from London Mayor Boris Johnson to then hand it over to Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes. — IANS

Games that will always be remembered

India clinch six medals — two silver and four bronze — to record their best haul at the quadrennial event

London: Sushil Kumar’s historic feat of winning back-to-back Olympic medals on the very last day undoubtedly turned out to be the high point of the India’s campaign as the biggest-ever contingent completed the 30th edition of the Games with a record haul of six medals. The wrestlers provided the late sparks to the Indian campaign with Sushil’s silver medal in the 66kg category and bronze through Yogeshwar Dutt (60kg) that went a long way in overshadowing the flop show of some of the other star players. In the end, India did live up to the expectation as six medals is something that was being spoken about by commentators when the contingent embarked for the Games. It was a far better show than the one gold and two bronze medals that India won at the Beijing Olympics four years ago. Yet, there was a feeling that India may fall short of the target till the last two days of the Games when the wrestlers changed the script with their stunning display on the mat. Sushil, a bronze medal winner in Beijing, emerged as the hero with his effort. For long, Indian sportspersons had been confined to mediocrity and were just making up the numbers in the Olympic Games and it was a refreshing change to see individual medals coming their way. Yogeshwar’s bronze medal was also a stupendous feat considering the fact that he bounced back brilliantly after losing his 60kg quarterfinal bout and worked his way to the bronze through the repechage stage. He showed tremendous stamina, skill and strength to overcome all odds. Apart from the exploits of the wrestlers, shooter Vijay Kumar clinched the silver medal in the 25m rapid fire event, while five-time world women’s boxing champion MC Mary Kom, ace shuttler Saina Nehwal and rifle shooter Gagan Narang won bronze medals each. But, there were disappointments galore and it came more from the star athletes who were said to have realistic chances of winning medals. But sadly, most of them flopped. The big names like shooters Abhinav Bindra and Ronjan Sodhi, archer Deepika Kumari and Beijing bronze medallist boxer Vijender Singh returned empty-handed. All of them were serious medal contenders. The much-hyped men’s hockey players were the worst offenders as they lost all their six matches to finish 12th and last, the worst-ever performance in the history of the Games if one overlooks the country’s failure to even make it to the 2008 Olympics. The archers too were major let-downs. They went into the Olympics with good form behind them and the men’s team had even qualified for the Olympics with a good show. But when the moment came, they simply crumbled with none of them performing to potential. True, the windy, cold and cloudy conditions here did not suit them but then they had trained well taking into consideration all these factors. A pre-competition bout of fever to the archers was attributed as the main reason for their poor show. Most of the archers trotted out that excuse after their events. The lowest point in archery came when Deepika, the world No 1, crashed out in the very first round of the women’s individual recurve. It was a shocker for the Indian camp. Talking about shocks, nothing, however can be bigger than the bottom place finish of the men’s hockey team after losing 2-3 to South Africa in the 11-12 classification match. Never in the history of Indian hockey has a team finished last in the Olympics, an 8th finish in the Atlanta Olympic Games being their worst show before the London debacle. The Indian team lost all their group league matches, some of them quite badly, and it seemed that the gap with other international teams had widened over the last few weeks. In the days to come, analysts and experts will come out with various reasons on why the Indian team failed but the bottomline is that the players were simply not good enough and what they dished out was absolute pedestrian stuff. The embarrassing result will also raise a debate on whether Australian Michael Nobbs, who had promised to revive Indian hockey, would be sent packing as the coach like so many of his predecessors -- Jose Brasa, Gerhard Rach and Ric Charlesworth. It may not be fair to fully blame Nobbs for the disaster. The players were simply not implementing the plans and it is hard to explain why. There was a huge expectation from the Indian shooters when they left but perhaps the hype was a trifle misplaced as the biggest ever shooting contingent returned with just a silver and a bronze. The big names of Indian shooting did not quite live up to reputation and the form deserted them when it mattered the most, as a result, India just won two medals even as they hoped for a bigger haul. The unheralded Vijay Kumar emerged as the hero with his silver medal in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol, while Narang bagged a bronze in the men’s 10m air rifle event. Apart from these two medal winning effort, Joydeep Karmakar put in a creditable performance in the 50m rifle prone as he missed the bronze medal by a whisker to take the fourth position. When the team left the Indian shores, Beijing Games gold medallist Bindra, Narang and Sodhi were touted as serious medal contenders and the media was talking about an unprecedented hall of medals from the shooting ranges at the Royal Artillery Barracks. The boxing ring was expected to give India a few medals, but a bronze from Mary Kom was all that came their way. There was a lot of hype surrounding the boxers when they left for the Games amid high hopes of winning a few medals, so the results will no doubt come as a huge let down with all the male boxers returning empty-handed. The 29-year-old Mary was the saving grace for the contingent as she clinched a historic bronze in women’s boxing that has been introduced in the Olympics for the first time. Mary, who generally fights in the 48kg category, had to increase her body weight to take part in the women’s 51kg category and did put up a sterling show against boxers who were much taller and heavier than her. In badminton, Saina’s bronze meant she became the first India to win a medal in badminton.