TURIN, Italy — With the roar of fireworks punctuating a rousing farewell, the 2006 Winter Games closed Sunday night, an Olympics to be recalled for feuds and falls, for ice dancing stare-downs and, perhaps most, for a late-night raid by police seeking evidence of doping.
Against scenes from an Italian street carnival, with athletes from 80 nations sporting red clown noses and the 33,000 in attendance at Olympic Stadium holding masks -- half the crowd turned into angels, the other half devils -- Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, called the 2006 Olympics "truly magnificent Games."
In a security breach just before Rogge spoke, an intruder made it to the microphone at the dais on the raised platform on the stadium's north side and shouted, "Passion lives in Torino!" the slogan of the Games. Later identified by police as Spanish, the intruder was wrestled off the stage by security guards, then taken into custody for questioning.
The pageantry, as in the opening ceremony Feb. 10, veered between the formalities of Olympic protocol and the surreal, in particular a troupe of acrobats who "flew" as high as the stadium's top deck, one on a snowboard, atop a jet of air whooshing up from center stage.
Organ music and Elvis Presley tunes gave way to a tuxedoed chamber orchestra and then, in turn, to singers as diverse as Andrea Bocelli, Ricky Martin and Avril Lavigne, the Italian tenor and the pop stars only part of the mix amid dancers, clowns, stilt walkers, mermaids and 400 lantern-carrying "brides" dressed in white.
As the 187-foot-high caldron, tallest in Olympic history, was extinguished, cries of thanks and goodbye brought the curtain down on the carnival and on the Turin Olympics: "Grazie!" and "Ciao!"
The Olympic spotlight shifts now to Beijing, site of the Summer Games in 2008, and Vancouver, the 2010 Winter Games host.
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, a quadriplegic, accepted the Olympic flag from Turin Mayor Sergio Chiamparino -- and, in a demonstration of can-do spirit, spun his mechanized wheelchair to make the giant 16-foot flag flutter.
Chiamparino had said beforehand he knew the close of the Games would be bittersweet: "There will be sadness because something beautiful will be ending."
History, however, may well record the full picture of the 2006 Games as less than "something beautiful."
