Paralympics: British press laud Games finale

LONDON: Britain's press on Monday mostly lavished praise on the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games, a show which brought the curtain down on more than six weeks of sporting action at London 2012.

The Times went with the headline "From the Heart of London 2012" over a wraparound photograph of a heart-shaped ring of flame that encircled flag-waving Paralympians inside the Olympic Stadium in east London.

Simon Barnes of the upmarket Rupert Murdoch-owned paper described the three-hour ceremony as "a raucous blast" while top-selling tabloid The Sun splashed "We Loved It!" across their front page.

The middle-market Daily Mirror went with "It's Been a Blast" over a picture of fireworks exploding into the night sky from the edges of the stadium.

The paper said a global audience of one billion had watched the "breath-taking finale" that had featured British supergroup Coldplay performing "some of their most iconic songs, including Viva La Vida."

The left-leaning Independent ran the headline "There is a flame that will never go out" beneath a different angle of the same heart-shaped ring of fire.

Reporter Cahal Milmo described a "spectacular show that mixed superstars Coldplay, Jay-Z and Rihanna with a baroque -- at times darkly surreal -- parade of fire-belching contraptions, mid-September snowstorms and human fireflies."

But tempering the enthusiasm came an acid-tongued appraisal of the night's musical offerings, with reviewer Nick Hasted describing Coldplay as having "no drama or charisma, a vacant version of British pop in the 21st century."

The Guardian ran the front-page headline "Goodbye to Britain's Golden Summer" beneath a startling image of a burning sculpture of a pagan-looking 'sun king' which had featured in the ceremony.

Journalist Jonathan Freedland described the show as "an extravaganza of fire and light that honoured the now familiar London 2012 formula combining the surreal and the spectacular."

The Daily Mail went with the headline "A heartfelt farewell" over a different image of the heart-shaped ring, reporter David Jones praising the ceremony as a "wonderful, uplifting tribute" to the Paralympian athletes.

The Daily Telegraph front page header was "The Summer of Love", again plastered over a vertical image of the flaming, heart-shaped ring.

The report beneath by Paul Hayward acknowledged "the cast of 1,336 performers" that had taken part but drily noted that the show had "imitated one of the music festivals that pepper the summer landscape."

Meanwhile, the Financial Times also ran a picture of the ceremony on its front page under the strapline "Games over: Paralympics close with GB in third place" after Britain's tally of 34 gold medals over the 11 days of competition.