The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished as part of 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 told local organizers that they “delivered a new kind of winter games and you set a new, very high standard for the future.”
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 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 1,500 athletes on their feet for an upbeat dance number while colour confetti exploded on stage.
Earlier, the 2026 Winter Olympians filed into the arena waving small national flags to a rousing medley of Italian pop hits from the 20th century as the crowd sang along, taking their seats in the stone arena in places marked by green, red and white lights for the Italian flag.
The Canadian Olympic Committee said approximately 90 of Canada’s 207 athletes in Milan Cortina marched in 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 2 1/2-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony cast, including Italian singer Achille Lauro, but also long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates within the amphitheatre’s tunnels.
On stage, Madama Butterfly in a bright pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while 17th century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from La Traviata, a nod to the Arena’s long history as 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 their 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 in the centre of the stage.
This was the first 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 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.
Key moments included the Olympic flag is handed over to the next Winter Games host nation, France.
The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of 22,000 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 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 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’ opening ceremony will also take place in the Verona Arena, on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.
© 2026 The Canadian Press