Sochi Games come to a close with spectacular ceremonies

SOCHI - Vladimir Putin hoped these 2014 Winter Olympics would show the world that a bright, new, and modern Russia had emerged from a nation with a mysterious and often dark past.

In case anyone missed the point, it was reemphasized spectacularly Sunday night during closing ceremonies rife with 21st-century technology and augmented with the same artistic sensibility with which Russia launched the Sochi Olympics 17 days ago.

Laser-lit and with special effects worthy of Hollywood, the colorful and musically rich ceremonies at Fisht Olympic Stadium marked the official end of an Olympiad that not only informed the world but astounded it.

Logistically, the Sochi Games were, to a remarkable extent for so vast an enterprise, trouble-free.

A transportation system that included a new railway line ran flawlessly, the unprecedented security measures worked, and the venues - in picturesque clusters along the Black Sea and in the nearby Caucasus Mountains - were both striking and convenient.

Few would have believed all that possible during the long and controversial run-up to the Feb. 6 start of the Games that will forever be linked to Putin. The Russian Federation president had pleaded personally with the International Olympic Committee in 2007 to bring them here, then spent a reported $51 billion to ensure their success.

There were dire predictions of protests over Russia's antigay regulations, threats of terrorist interruptions, concerns over unfinished facilities, and doubts about Sochi's subtropical climate and remote locale so near the simmering Caucasus region.

Those antigay laws caused President Obama to snub the opening and closing ceremonies. In what was believed to be a thinly veiled protest, he sent openly gay athletes to represent the United States at the ceremonies.

One who couldn't be there Feb. 6 because of her mother's illness was Billie Jean King. The tennis legend, however, was scheduled to attend Sunday. But if she was there, she wasn't in a prominent spot and, not surprisingly, Russian TV never showed her.

Despite unusually warm winter weather, Russia's first Winter Games drew praise from athletes, visitors, and even normally cynical journalists.

"The response we've got from all the different participants is really overwhelmingly positive," IOC president Thomas Bach said during a news conference earlier Sunday. "Whether you speak with the athletes, with the national Olympic committees, with national federations, with sponsors, with broadcasters, you hear a lot of praise for these Games."

Early on, there were reports of unfinished hotels, packs of stray dogs, and undrinkable water. But those issues dissipated as the Games flowed on.

The most notable athletic controversy was a relatively minor one, South Koreans complaining that figure skater Yuna Kim had been cheated out of a gold medal by a panel of judges that they believed was beholden to Russian interests.

Curiously, Sochi's impressive logistics inadvertently may have overshadowed the performances of the nearly 3,000 athletes who, in much more casual fashion, again marched into the stadium Sunday night.

Few world records were established in the 88 medal events. And though Russian speedskater Victor An, the victorious Canadian hockey teams, and Dutch speedskaters performed memorably, there were no breakout superstars such as Jean-Claude Killy or Katarina Witt, no single signature moment like 1980's "Miracle on Ice."

Host Russia won more overall medals (33) and gold medals (13) than any other nation. The United States was second with 28 medals, nine gold. Norway won 11 golds.

"The success of the home team is always an important part of the Games," Bach said.

Julie Chu, a four-time Olympic hockey player, carried the U.S. flag into the stadium on Sunday night. Two-time gold-medal-winning bobsledders Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse hoisted Canada's.

Some of the Canadian men's hockey players were there, though the ceremonies began barely an hour after they had defeated Sweden, 3-0, in the gold-medal game that closed Sochi's competition.

Many of the athletes walked in - through a pathway that emerged from beneath the stadium floor - taking "selfies" as they waved to the enthusiastic crowd. That crowd erupted with its loudest cheers of the night whenever a Russian athlete appeared.

Their low-key entrance was flanked by an ethereal production that combined elements from Russia's great history of art, music, dance, and literature with jaw-dropping technology.

Children from the Pan-Russian Choir performed a stirring version of Russia's anthem to kick off the show.

"We wanted to take a new, fresh look at Russian culture," said Konstantin Ernst, the show's creative director. "The idea of the children's choir participation is related to the fact that it's the end of the Winter Games, and in a week or so we're going to enter spring. . . . It's a message related to the future."

A ship carrying three children and a star-catching clown floated in midair above a sparkling blue sea illuminated by laser torches. A lone pianist emerged from beneath the stadium floor and soon was joined by 62 others. An upside-down floating village brought to mind the work of Russian-born artist Marc Chagall.

The organizers even displayed a sense of humor. Four large groups of silver-costumed performers, moving like shoals of fish, at one point formed four Olympic rings. A fifth group, resembling a shimmering snowflake, lingered near the edge until it too formed a ring and linked with the others.

It was a whimsical reference to the opening ceremonies gaffe, when one of five massive snowflakes failed to morph into an Olympic ring.

There were tributes to Russian artists: musician Dimitri Tiomkin, who was trained in St. Petersburg but left to win fame and Academy Awards in Hollywood; writers Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nikolai Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev; painters Chagall and Vasily Kandinsky; ballet master Sergei Diaghilev.

The Sochi Games, according to Bach, established records in the number of drug tests administered (2,631), the number of networks around the world that carried them (300), and the amount of time viewers spent watching on devices other than their television sets.

Putin stood throughout the ceremonies in the private box he shared with Bach.

After the ceremonial handoff from Sochi's organizers to those who will stage the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Bach declared the Games officially closed.

"We leave," he said, "as friends of the Russian people."

The 21/2-hour show closed with a spectacular, 10-minute barrage of fireworks, something that, symbolically at least, Putin's Games had managed to avoid in the previous 21/2 weeks.

Those fireworks illuminated the architecturally unique facilities in the adjacent Olympic Park, the entire, surreal scene light-years removed from the Soviet Sochi Bach recalled visiting as a young IOC member.

"It's amazing what has happened here," he said. "[Sochi was] an old Stalinist-style sanatorium city. You entered the room and you were looking at the roof so you would not be hit by something falling down."