The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday with a closing ceremony inside Verona Arena, an ancient Roman amphitheater that sits roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games in Olympic history.
The 2½-hour ceremony celebrated Italian music and dance, both classic and contemporary, headlining internationally acclaimed ballet dancer Roberto Bolle along with popular Italian singer Achille Lauro and DJ Gabry Ponte.
Some 1,500 Olympians, a bit over half those who competed in the Games, paraded into the monument built in the first century for gladiator fights and exotic animal hunts.
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They entered en masse behind a pair of flag bearers from each of the 92 participating nations, including biathlete Lisa Vittozzi and speedskater Davide Ghiotto for host Italy, and hockey player Hilary Knight and ice dancer Evan Bates for the United States – all gold medal winners.
The United States fielded its biggest Winter Olympics team ever for the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, with 232 athletes competing, and broke the record for Team USA’s most gold medals at a single Winter Games. The U.S. was one of only two nations to compete in all 16 sport disciplines, along with host Italy, according to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
“These Games showcased the very best of Team USA: resilience, unity and a relentless pursuit of excellence,” said USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland said in a statement. “Our athletes delivered a truly historic performance, earning a Team USA-record 12 gold medals and creating moments that will inspire the next generation … That momentum now carries us forward as we look ahead to Los Angeles in 2028, where we’re excited to build on this legacy and welcome the world to our home soil.”
Some 12,000 spectators joined the athletes and officials for the closing ceremony. It was much more intimate than the opening ceremony, which starred Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, attended by more than 60,000 people.
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The ceremony celebrated Italian lyric opera, which has been recognized by the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as a global treasure, but also pay tribute to contemporary Italian classics. Both opera and dance are at home in the stone amphitheater, which each summer hosts a popular opera festival with lavish productions and the gala dance performance titled Roberto Bolle and Friends.
Part of the ceremony included a somber remembrance of athletes who have died, although the commemoration, filled with butterfly imagery, did not identify specific athletes.
Earlier in the 2026 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee kept Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych out of competition after he refused a last-minute plea from the IOC for him not to use a helmet that honors athletes killed in Russia’s war on his country. The helmet goes against a rule about making political statements on the Olympic field of play, according to the IOC.
“No one, especially me, is disagreeing with the messaging, it’s a powerful message, it’s a message of remembrance, of memory,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry told reporters at the time, according to the Reuters news agency. The challenge was to find a solution for the field of play.”
This was the first Games for Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, who oversaw the ceremony alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
One of the key moments of the ceremony is when the Olympic flag is handed over to the next Winter Games host nation, France, and its flag is raised next to Italy’s and Greece’s.
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The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of 8,500 square mile, 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.
It’s a model that will remain for future Games, to avoid the expense of building new facilities. The 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held abroad in a venue to be decided.
The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames being extinguished at the unprecedented two cauldrons in Milan and Cortina, to be viewed via video link. A light show will substitute fireworks, which are not allowed in Verona, to protect animals from being disturbed.
A total of 116 medal events have been held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition.
The Milan Cortina Paralympics’ opening ceremony will also take place in the Verona Arena, on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.
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