‘Mission accomplished’

RIO DE JANEIRO — Rio said farewell to the 2016 Paralympics Sunday in a closing ceremony showcasing Brazil’s passion for music and celebrating what many consider to have been a surprisingly successful Games. The famous Maracana football stadium was packed, with the Paralympians themselves seated across the field, as proceedings kicked off with fireworks. Among the first performers was Jonathan Bastos, a Brazilian who was born without arms but has became an accomplished musician, playing the guitar with his feet. Then it was Ricardinho, star of Brazil’s gold medal winning five-a-side Paralympic football team, who brought out the national flag. But the glittering celebration — at one point featuring an unscripted conga line of dancing athletes — paused for a minute’s silence to remember the fatal crash of an Iranian cyclist Saturday. Bahman Golbarnezhad’s death during the road race left the Paralympic movement “united in grief,” Philip Craven, the International Paralympic Committee president, said in a speech. Overall, organizers are breathing a sigh of relief that forecasts of failure for South America’s first Olympics and Paralympics were proved wrong. “Mission accomplished,” said Carlos Nuzman, president of the Rio organizing committee. Referring to the political instability and deep recession plaguing Brazil, he conceded that it had been “a mission of many doubts.” As Craven declared the Games over — with Tokyo now taking up the baton for 2020 — he said Brazil had passed a difficult test. “These Games importantly signal a very bright future for this youthful and wonderful nation,” Craven said. Eleven days of competition where China dominated the medals table, followed by Britain, ended earlier with the last few events, including marathons and wheelchair rugby. Watching the marathon along the seafront in Copacabana earlier, spectator Marcelo Augusto Miranda Costa said the Games had been “a moment of magic for the city.” By the end of the Games, officials said, they had sold 2.1 million tickets — fewer than London in 2012 but more than Beijing four years earlier. The gap between the Olympic and Paralympic performances is gradually blurring with disabled athletes breaking records after records in Rio. Among the stars were Brazil’s swimmer Daniel Dias who added four golds, three silvers and two bronzes to his existing medal haul from Beijing and London — which has won him descriptions as the Michael Phelps of the Paralympics. There was amazement in the 1,500m track race when Algeria’s Abdellatif Baka set a new record that was actually faster than the winning time by Olympic gold medalist Matthew Centrowitz in the same stadium a month earlier. Once more, it was China that dominated overall, with 239 medals, including 107 golds — far ahead of nearest rival Britain with 147 total and 64 golds. Ukraine with 117 medals and the United States with 115 followed. — Agencies