Paris gives Paralympic Games a send-off for the ages

But France wanted one last frenzied night of celebration and the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis was transformed into a massive electronica dance party with some of the world’s top elite para athletes doing the conga around the stadium on an athletics track where days before records were being broken.

The Paris Games organisers said they wanted the Paralympics closing ceremony to “show we know how to party” – as if anyone still had any doubt that the French capital liked letting its hair down.

Jean-Michel Jarre, France’s godfather of synthesisers and stadium laser shows, headed a riotous showcase of France electro dance amid flashing light-shows, hundreds of crisscrossing laser beams and walls of flames on stage. The “French Touch” extravaganza culminated in the star DJ Martin Solveig playing Daft Punk’s One More Time amid a stage full of dancing para athletes, giant mascots bobbing in sequin skirts and a volley of hundreds of fireworks