Paris Olympics Summer Games end with handoff to Los Angeles. What will the handoff to Utah for 2034 look like?

The world got its first look at Salt Lake City as an Olympic host in Nagano, Japan, during the closing ceremonies of the 1998 Winter Games.

On that February evening 26½ years ago, for five minutes the Japanese stadium field was filled with massive inflatable versions of Utah’s arches and mountains along with dancers, cowboys on horseback and a horse-drawn stagecoach. The event, which was said to cost more than $750,000, also included fireworks and children shouting, “See you in 2002!”

The ceremonial handoff of a giant version of the Olympic flag that features the five multicolored Olympic rings on a white background went to then-Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini , the first woman in that role. Dressed in a bright red snowsuit, she waved a giant version of the flag in front of the then president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

The introduction of the next Summer or Winter Games host is always part of the closing ceremonies that mark the end of an Olympics.

When the 2024 Summer Games in Paris ended Sunday , the handoff to the next Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028 was part of the show, with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass becoming the first Black woman to receive the Olympic flag as the representative of the next host.

Viewers enjoyed Tom Cruise rapelling into the Stade de France shortly after H.E.R. performed the American national anthem. Then, after Bass received the Olympic flag, she and gymnast Simone Biles handed it to Cruise and he put it on the back of a motorcycle and rode it out of the stadium. In a prerecorded segment, Cruise then appeared to bring the flag to Los Angeles, where the Hollywood sign was dressed up to feature the Olympic rings. The flag was then carried through the hills and streets of the city by various past and current Olympic athletes, before finally ending up at a concert featuring stars like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Snoop Dogg.

The handoff from Paris to Los Angeles will be repeated at the end of the 2030 Winter Games, when the French Alps symbolically send the Olympics back to Salt Lake City. It’s a little soon to speculate what Utah’s portion of those closing ceremonies might look like, since the IOC just named both the 2030 and the 2034 Winter Games hosts in Paris.

“Right now, it’s wide open,” said Fraser Bullock, president and CEO of the Salt Lake City Committee for the Games. “That’s one of the things we’ll be doing over the next several years, is getting a sense for what we want to communicate at that point in time, gathering information from our communities, from our political leaders.”

Bullock said whatever “key messages” Utah ends up conveying in France’s 2030 closing ceremonies will carry over to the 2034 Winter Games . He expects it to be “a very special moment because it’s we’re next and the reality of the Games really increases at that point. To think, four years and we’re on stage.”

Participating in the ceremonies prescribed by the IOC is “a very significant honor,” Bullock said. “We want to make everybody proud, both our friends in the French Alps as well as the people of Utah,” with something that’s seen as reflecting “our culture and heritage, and is also exciting and cool.”