Athletes from the United States attend the closing ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Verona, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

VERONA, Italy — The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished during a closing ceremony inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games ever.

In declaring the 2026 Games over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told local organizers that they “delivered a new kind of winter games and you set a new, very high standard for the future.”

The next Winter Games will be held in neighboring France, which received the Olympic flag in the official handover earlier in the ceremony. Following the same spread-out model, the 2030 Winter Games will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held either in Italy or the Netherlands.

A total of 116 medal events were held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition. With the final events wrapping up just hours before the ceremony, the 50-kilometer mass start men’s and women’s cross country medals were awarded by Coventry inside the Arena.

Host Italy won its highest Winter Olympic tally ever with 30 medals — 10 gold, six silver and 14 bronze, crushing the previous record of 20 set at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.

“Your outstanding performance united Italians everywhere and played a fundamental role in the success of the games,” Giovanni Malagò, the president of the Milan Cortina Foundation told the Italian athletes sitting behind him wearing headbands emblazoned with ”Italia.”

The closing ceremony paid tribute to Italian dance and music — from lyric opera to Italian pop of the 20th century to the DJ beat of Gabry Ponte, who got the 1,500 athletes on their feet and dancing while color confetti exploded on stage. Italian Achille Lauro delivered the last word with the song “Incoscienti Giovani,” or reckless young people, just before athletes who so aptly harnessed their youthful energy for these Games filed out.

The 2½-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony cast, including Achille Lauro, but also long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates within the amphitheater’s tunnels.

On stage, Madama Butterfly in a bright pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while 17th century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from La Traviata, a nod to the Arena’s long history as the venue for a summer opera festival.

The opera characters, led by the jester Rigoletto, spilled out into the piazza outside, mixing with the bemused athletes who were flag-bearers for their countries, some ofwhom pulled out their phones to film.

In a later sequence, internationally acclaimed ballet dancer Roberto Bolle made his first-ever aerial performance inside a blazing ring meant to represent the sun. He was lowered to the stage that mimicked the Venetian lagoon, replete with gondolas, where he danced to a haunting song by Italian singer Joan Thiele.

In a key moment, the Olympic flame encased in a Venetian glass vessel was carried into the Arena by Italian gold medalists from the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The Olympic rings illuminated in white appeared high on the stone stairs behind the stage, flanked by national flags, when one raised the flame in the center of the stage.

Gu defends title

Eileen Gu is now six-for-six in Olympic medal events after another halfpipe victory.

The 22-year-old Gu, American-born but competing for her mother’s homeland of China, is already the most decorated freeskier in the short history of the sport at the Olympics. She also captured two silver medals at the Milan Cortina Games, to pair with two golds and a silver from the Beijing Games.

Gu won her last event on the strength of her second run, a clean, technically sound pass. She got even better in her final run — pumping his ski poles after landing the final trick — and finished with a score of 94.75.

Elsewhere Sunday:

n First, Ebba Andersson pulled away from the pack to win the 50-kilometer mass start cross-country ski race and earn redemption for her crash that cost Sweden a gold medal in the team relay. And then Sweden’s curling moms beat Switzerland to give the Scandinavian nation another gold.

n Jessie Diggins of the U.S. finished fifth in the 50-kilometer mass start cross-country ski race. Just a few seconds shy of one more medal. It marked the final Olympic event for an athlete who transformed American cross‒country skiing and became a symbol of endurance.

n In bobsled, Germany’s Johannes Lochner added the four-man gold to his two-man title. Lochner — who announced his retirement months ago — capped his career with his second gold medal of these Olympics, winning the four-man event over two-time defending Olympic champion Francesco Friedrich by 0.57 seconds.

On Saturday:

n Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo set the record for the most golds by one athlete in a single Winter Olympics as the Norwegian star completed his historic gold medal sweep of the men’s cross-country skiing events on Saturday. Klaebo’s triumph in the 50-kilometer mass start race was his sixth victory at the Milan Cortina Games and shattered the nearly 50-year record set by American speed skater Eric Heiden, who won five golds in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. Klaebo’s teammates, Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, took silver, and Emil Iversen won bronze in a Norwegian sweep.

n Jordan Stolz missed out on his chance to become the first man since 1994 to collect three gold medals in long track speedskating at one Olympics, with the American finishing fourth in the mass start behind 40-year-old champion Jorrit Bergsma of the Netherlands. The gold in the women’s mass start also went to a Dutch skater: reigning world champion Marijke Groenewoud. Ivanie Blondin of Canada was the silver medalist for the second Games in a row, followed by Mia Manganello of the U.S. with the bronze.

n The United States Olympic team won its 11th gold medal when the trio of Kaila Kuhn, Connor Curran and Chris Lillis took the title in mixed aerials.

n Finland won the bronze medal in men’s hockey at the Olympics for a third consecutive time with NHL players participating, beating Slovakia 6-1.

n The Canadian men beat Britain for gold in curling while the women’s team overcame its disappointment to beat the U.S, for the bronze.

n Kaillie Humphries Armbruster won her sixth career Olympic bobsled medal, tying monobob gold medalist Elana Meyers Taylor for the most by any woman in the sport’s history. The American claimed bronze in the two-woman race. Laura Nolte won gold.