The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday because the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished as a part of a closing ceremony inside the traditional Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these essentially the most spread-out Winter Games ever.
In declaring the 2026 Games over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told local organizers that they “delivered a brand new form of winter games and also you set a brand new, very high standard for the longer term.”
A complete of 116 medal events have been held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this yr, over the course of 17 days of competition.
The closing ceremony paid tribute to Italian dance and music — from lyric opera to Italian pop of the twentieth century to the DJ beat of Gabry Ponte, who got the 1,500 athletes on their feet for an upbeat dance number while color confetti exploded on stage.
Earlier, the 2026 Winter Olympians filed into the sector waving small national flags to a rousing medley of Italian pop hits from the twentieth century as the gang sang along, taking their seats within the stone arena in places marked by green, red and white lights for the Italian flag.
The Canadian Olympic Committee said roughly 90 of Canada’s 207 athletes in Milan Cortina marched within the closing ceremony, with speedskater Valérie Maltais and short-track speedskater Steven Dubois carrying the Canadian flag into the stadium.
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The two 1/2-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony forged, including Italian singer Achille Lauro, but additionally long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates inside the amphitheatre’s tunnels.
On stage, Madama Butterfly in a vivid pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while seventeenth century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from La Traviata, a nod to the Arena’s long history because the venue for a summer opera festival.
The opera characters, led by the jester Rigoletto, spilled out into the piazza outside, mixing with the bemused athletes who were flag-bearers for his or her countries, some ofwhom pulled out their phones to film.
In a key moment, the Olympic flame encased in a Venetian glass vessel was carried into the Arena by Italian gold medallists from the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The Olympic rings illuminated in white appeared high on the stone stairs behind the stage, flanked by national flags, when one raised the flame within the centre of the stage.
This was the primary Olympics for Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, who watched much of the ceremony alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Some 12,000 spectators joined the athletes and officials for the closing ceremony, which was rather more intimate affair than the opening ceremony starring Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, attended by greater than 60,000 people.
Key moments included the Olympic flag is handed over to the subsequent Winter Games host nation, France.
The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of twenty-two,000 square kilometres (8,500 square miles), 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 within the Val di Fiemme north of Verona and ladies’s downhill, curling and sliding sports in co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo.
It’s a model that can remain for future Games, to avoid the expense of constructing recent facilities. The 2030 Winter Games within the French Alps will stage events within the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating shall be held abroad in a venue to be decided.
The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames extinguished on the unprecedented two cauldrons in Milan and Cortina, viewed in Verona via video link. A light-weight show substituted fireworks, which will not be allowed in Verona, to guard animals from being disturbed.
The Milan Cortina Paralympics’ opening ceremony will even happen within the Verona Arena, on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.
© 2026 The Canadian Press