Arrivederci to All That

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.”

In Italy, sports doping is a crime punishable by up to two years in prison, and for the first time in modern Olympic history, police executed a search during the Games on Olympic quarters.

The Feb. 18 raid of the Austrian biathlon and cross-country ski teams’ mountain chalets by Italian military police yielded, among other items, used syringes.

That same night, the IOC subjected 10 Austrian Nordic skiers to surprise doping tests. The IOC said Friday the Austrian samples had turned up no evidence of doping.

But the matter is not over. Italian judicial authorities, the IOC and the Austrian Olympic Committee have opened separate inquiries.

Rogge, saying Sunday that the campaign against doping had to be fought “with all the means you can have,” also said he was “very satisfied and happy” with the 2006 Olympics, particularly with the quality of the sports venues.

Last week, however, he was less enthusiastic in an interview with the Associated Press, saying these Olympics ranked with the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, behind the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

There was little buzz in the streets of Turin, in part because Italy won only 11 medals, well off its Winter Games best of 20 in Lillehammer. The last, however, proved dramatic on Sunday.

After 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, and more than two hours on cross-country skis, Italian Giorgio di Centa crossed the finish line a mere eight-tenths of a second ahead of Russian Evgeni Dementiev. Austrian Mikhail Botwinov, eight days after the police raids, finished only one-tenth of a second behind Dementiev, winning bronze.

Botwinov, in a reference to the raids on the Austrian quarters, said after finishing third, “Personally, I don’t have any bad conscience. I do not have to justify anything.”

Di Centa was presented his medal at the closing ceremony -- by his sister, Manuela di Centa, herself a multiple cross-country Olympic medalist and IOC member, the stadium resounding with roars of delight. Italian ice dancers Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, meanwhile, provided one of the enduring images of these or any Games -- staring at each other at center ice, hands on hips, for more than 30 seconds after he dropped her at the close of their short program. Fusar Poli said afterward: “What did we did? We did a mistake.”

Turin won the 2006 Games in 1999. Even with seven years to prepare, however, construction sites remain abundant here, hardly the look of a city showing off “something beautiful.”

The 2006 Games cost about $3.4 billion. Nearly two-thirds went to infrastructure improvements in and around Turin.

In Beijing, the most recent official estimate of the overall cost for Games-related sites and urban projects is more than 10 times as much: $38 billion. Included will be rail lines, metro lines, sewer construction and sports facilities, among them a 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium.

The 2008 Games figure to deliver not just a remade Beijing but Chinese sports excellence, with the host country challenging for the gold-medal lead. Here, China served notice of what is to come, winning 11 medals, surpassing the previous Chinese best at a Winter Olympics, eight in 2002 and 1998. For the first time, the Chinese won a gold medal on snow, by freestyle aerialist Han Xiaopeng. “The delegation has reached its goal of steady going,” said Xiao Tian, a Chinese Olympic Committee vice president.

Germany, as it did in 2002, won the medals race with 29, seven fewer than at Salt Lake. Twenty-six nations won medals here, up from 24 in 2002.

Canada, looking forward to the Vancouver Games in 2010, won 24; Austria took 23; Russia, 22; South Korea, 11.

The U.S. team finished second with 25.

That figure remained well shy of the record 34 won by the 2002 U.S. team. Still, 25 is the second-best U.S. mark. Among the Americans, short-track speedskating star Apolo Anton Ohno, with three medals, including a gold in the 500 meters, tied long-track speedskater Eric Heiden’s record from the 1980 Lake Placid Games for most medals in a career, five.

Speedskater Joey Cheek won two medals, one gold, and donated his $40,000 in U.S. Olympic Committee bonuses to the humanitarian group Right to Play, sparking corporate and individual contributions that as of Sunday, according to the group’s Johann Olav Koss, totaled more than $500,000. Cheek carried the U.S. flag into the closing ceremony.

At the same time, the U.S. effort was marred by slips, slides and behavioral missteps.

Speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis feuded; Alpine skier Bode Miller, a contender in five events, won no medals and partook of the bar scene in the mountain hamlet of Sestriere, Italy; and freestyle aerialist Jeret Peterson was sent home after fistfighting.

Heading toward Beijing, USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr said, the committee would do a better job of making sure U.S. athletes understood that “their behavior should bring honor to the United States.”

Like U.S. snowboarder Rosey Fletcher -- a standout example from the 2006 Olympics of how the Games, despite controversy, retain the power to inspire. In her third Games, Fletcher finally won a medal, a bronze in the parallel giant slalom, then said, “If I can just change one person’s life in a positive way, even if it’s a first-grader from my elementary school in Girdwood, Alaska, population 1,500, if I can just change one person’s life in a positive way and if that means realizing that dreams can come true, that’s perfect for me.”