Swiss bid Paris Olympics goodbye with ‘impressive’ display of artistic talent

Swiss-Franco tenor Benjamin Bernheim sings during the Paris 2024 closing ceremony. He was accompanied on the piano by another Swiss artist, Alain Roche. AFP Or Licensors

The 2024 Summer Olympics ended on a high note on Sunday night, with Swiss artists playing key roles in the closing extravaganza. The Alpine country brought home eight medals, fewer than at Tokyo 2020, but hopes are high for a better performance in four years.

Born in Jura in western Switzerland, Alain Roche is known for defying gravity. But he’s no pole vaulter or gymnast. Roche is a musician and composer whose prowess at playing the piano while it’s suspended vertically in the air was on full display at the Stade de France on Sunday night. Newspaper Le Matin called itExternal link “the most breathtaking moment” of the Olympic closing ceremony.

As his piano left the stage and moved towards the sky, Roche played The Hymn to Apollo, accompanied on vocals by Franco-Swiss “rising star” Benjamin Bernheim. The tenor, who as a teenager sang in the choir of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, has twice won the Lyrical Artist of the Year prize at France’s Victoires de la musique classique.

Roche, draped in a cape made of old VHS tapes, gives the closing ceremony a Swiss flavour. AFP Or Licensors

The performance caused a sensation. Hollywood stars who introduced the next Summer Olympics host, Los Angeles, were “upstaged by a grand piano in the stunt stakes”, enthusedExternal link UK radio station Classic FM. “Suspended piano … stuns crowd”, blaredExternal link a headline from India Today. “Now then, this is impressive”, gushedExternal link The Guardian.

The entire experience was simply “incredible”, Roche told Classic FM after the show.

The pianist sported an elaborate costume created by another Swiss talent: designer Kevin Germanier from southwestern canton Valais. The 32-year-old used reels of old VHS tapes, found in his mother’s cellar, to fashion the outfit.

Germanier, the creator behind the Golden Voyager’s striking outfit, is known for his eco-friendly design ethos and has shown collections at Paris Fashion Week. 2024 Anadolu

Germanier also turned to upcycled materials for another stand-out costume, this one wrapping the Golden Voyager, played by French breakdancer Arthur Cadre. In all, Germanier and his team created more than 120 looksExternal link for the night’s dancers.

Potential for Swiss athletes to do better

Swiss athletes were also part of the fun at the closing ceremony. Silver medallist in triathlon, Julie Derron, and bronze medallist in swimming, Roman Mityukov, carried the red-and-white flag into the stadium.

With a total of eight medals (one gold, two silver and five bronze), the country achieved what Swiss Olympic head of delegation Ralph Stöckli called a “solid result”. Matching the exceptional performance in Tokyo three years ago, when the Swiss came away with 13 medals, was always going to be difficult, he said.

In all nine Swiss finished fourth in their discipline.

“Fourth place is always a disappointment,” said Stöckli at a press conference on Sunday. “But I’m convinced that it’s also a source of motivation for the future.” He said the potential was there to do better next time.

Swiss athletes celebrating at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics. 2024 Anadolu

“Switzerland is a leader in research and innovation,” he said. “We need to integrate this knowledge even more effectively into elite sport, while also exploiting synergies with the economy to further develop sport at the highest level.”

In the end, the Swiss medal haul was good compared to that of other countries with a similar population size or when measured against number of inhabitants, some media outlets pointed outExternal link. Interestingly, Swiss women won five of the eight medals as they continue to outperform the men, a feat first achieved at Sydney in 2000, according to the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.

Athletes ‘hostage to global battle against so-called wokism’

Looking back at the past fortnight, many women athletes dominated the spotlight in Paris. But a few became the subject of controversy, notably in the boxing ring. Some competitors accused Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan, favourites in the women’s competition, of “being men”. The International Boxing Association (IBA) had excluded the two from the world championships for having failed “gender tests”, but they were allowed to compete in Paris by the Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IBA was banned from organising the competition in Paris because of past arbitration and governance scandals.

Only a few years ago Switzerland, as the seat of the international Court of Arbitration for Sport, was embroiled in the landmark (and lengthy) case of Caster Semenya, the South African runner who is hyper-androgenous (meaning she has higher-than-usual levels of testosterone).

Perhaps for this reason, Swiss media weighed in on the boxing controversy mostly in measured tones. Newspaper Le Temps notedExternal link the debate had turned into a political spat between the IBA and the IOC, with athletes caught in the middle and rhetoric largely dictated by “uncontrollable” social media. Khelif in particular became “hostage to a global battle of conservatives against so-called ‘wokism’,” it said.

The Tages-Anzeiger, meanwhile, pointed outExternal link that many online commenters and media “have too little information to cast judgement” on the two athletes. The gender debate, the paper added, is discriminatory, focusing on female athletes who are forced to take “gender tests”, when the well-being of these women should be the priority.

Khelif, who won the gold medal, told the press all she wanted was respect for human dignity and for people to remember the principles of the Olympics. It remains to be seen if armchair and professional commentators alike will heed her call when the Paris Paralympic Games welcome competitors, including 27 Paralympians from Switzerland, beginning August 28.

Edited by Mark Livingston/ts