By Karolos Grohmann
BEIJING (Reuters) – There will be nothing equivalent to a London double decker bus or Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario when the hosts of the 2026 Winter Games receive the Olympic flag during the Beijing Games closing ceremony on Sunday.
While past handover ceremonies at the end of the Games have been glitzy and spectacular affairs, as was the case for the London 2012 Olympics in 2008 or the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2016, the Milan & Cortina Winter Olympics will put on a minimal show.
“The handover is a tricky ceremony in the closing ceremony because it has to contain the message of the future Games,” the handover ceremony’s creative producer Marco Balich told Reuters.
A veteran of 16 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, Balich said this time the brief eight-minute show would look to impress with a visually strong message.
“COVID has affected Tokyo 2020 and Beijing in a very heavy way,” the Italian said. “The celebration of humanity has been frozen.”
The Tokyo Games were held with a one-year delay in 2021 due to the pandemic, while the Beijing Winter Games have had only a handful of fans and no foreign visitors.
“Milano-Cortina as the next Winter Olympics can bring back the joy of bringing people together,” Balich said.
The northern Italian city and the mountain town in the Dolomites will also look to highlight the need for future Games to be more sustainable.
Instead of hundreds of dancers and a samba parade as for the Rio de Janeiro 2106 handover in London in 2012, the Italian hosts will have just six people.
“The flag handover is made up of only a six-people cast, very small, on the LED floor (inside the Bird’s Nest stadium),” Balich said.
“We have created a signal to the world with two small children rotating a giant globe into the centre over an ice lake that is cracking, which represents the fragility of the world, and then they embrace,” Balich said.
He said they represented the industrial hub of northern Italy, the country’s financial powerhouse and the beauty of nature in the Dolomites.
Even planning and creating a ceremony has been challenging in pandemic times with Balich’s colleagues having been sent to Beijing two months in advance to stay in quarantine.
Every Games participant, whether athlete, staff or media, is required to remain in a closed loop, a ‘bubble’, with no contact with the local population.
“We are going to go back to normal, bringing back emotions into the ceremony,” Balich said. “I think it is essential the next (Winter) Games will bring back the joy of the Olympics and hope for humanity.”
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; editing by Clare Fallon)
