Eyes turn to France as Milan-Cortina Games conclude

The Milan-Cortina Olympics ended on Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were extinguished during a closing ceremony inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games ever.

In declaring the 2026 Games over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, told local organisers that they "delivered a new kind of winter games and you set a new, very high standard for the future."

The 2030 Winter Games will follow the same spread-out model and be held in neighbouring France, staging events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held either in Italy or the Netherlands.

A total of 116 medal events were held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines over the course of 17 days of competition. With the final events, the 50km mass start men's and women's cross country, wrapping up just hours before the ceremony.

Host nation Italy won its highest Winter Olympic tally ever with 30 medals — 10 gold, six silver and 14 bronze, crushing the previous record of 20 set at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.

"Your outstanding performance united Italians everywhere and played a fundamental role in the success of the games," Giovanni Malago, the president of the Milan-Cortina Foundation told the Italian athletes sitting behind him.

The two-and-a-half-hour closing ceremony paid tribute to Italian dance and music — from lyric opera to Italian pop of the 20th century to the DJ beat of Gabry Ponte, who got the 1500 athletes on their feet and dancing while colour confetti exploded on stage.

Some 12,000 spectators also attended the closing ceremony, which was much more intimate affair than the opening ceremony starring Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan's San Siro soccer stadium, attended by more than 60,000 people.

The Games spanned an area of 22,000 square kilometres, from ice sports in Milan to biathlon in Anterselva on the Austrian border, snowboarding and men's downhill in Valtellina on the Swiss border, cross-country skiing in the Val di Fiemme north of Verona and women's downhill, curling and sliding sports in co-host Cortina d'Ampezzo.

The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames extinguished at the unprecedented two cauldrons in Milan and Cortina, viewed in Verona via video link. A light show substituted fireworks, which are not allowed in Verona, to protect animals from being disturbed.

The Milan-Cortina Paralympics will take place from March 6-15.