This felt like a classic Games and a new one all at once. This was an Olympics that existed in harmony with the city, as much as you can — no white elephant venues, but fences and heavy security. These were also the first Olympics after the COVID emergency, which meant plenty of coughing, sniffling, some masking and the occasional athlete contracting COVID and collapsing on a track, like American sprinter Noah Lyles after winning bronze in the 200 metres. For its part, Canada considered masking on the plane and upon arrival in Paris a competitive advantage, and largely avoided COVID cases among athletes. Expect to see that carry forward, in a world that pretends COVID isn’t far more contagious than the flu.

But the athletes always deliver, every time. Swimmer Léon Marchand became the king of France, Katie Ledecky added to her legacy and Summer McIntosh started what she hopes is a long, storied journey. Simone Biles was renewed after her dissolution in Tokyo, and Novak Djokovic finally won gold and his reaction — his wracking sobs and primal screams — was stunning. He called winning for his country the greatest feeling of his life, while Carlos Alcaraz struggled to speak through tears. The Olympics can crack anyone wide open.

The pseudo scandal that gripped these Olympics wasn’t the Canadian women’s soccer team spying, though Canada’s last-second win over France to stay alive was one of the great games ever played. No, it was female boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting. The scandal was pushed by irresponsible journalists — the British press, chiefly — and was based on unspecified tests done by a Russian-drenched federation of clowns so corrupt they were kicked out of the International Olympic Committee’s orbit.

It was a global wave of misdirected hatred and fear. Khelif won gold in front of a rapturous Algerian crowd; the next night, Lin did, too. The fight isn’t over, but they won theirs.

There are always fights. Between the drones and Andre De Grasse’s coach Rana Reider facing sexual harassment and abuse lawsuits, Canada led the Games in accreditations revoked, with four. Canada also won nine gold medals, seven silver, 11 bronze and 27 medals in total. That’s the second-highest total in Canada’s Olympic history, behind the 29-medal Winter Games in Pyeongchang, if we rightly exclude the boycotted 1984 Olympics.

“This is our best Games,” said COC director of sport Eric Myles. There remain real questions of how Canada can reshape its system to better protect athletes. That work has to continue after the Games.

At these Games, work and humanity was rewarded. Cindy Ngamba, a Cameroonian-born boxer who sought asylum because being gay could have landed her in prison, won the first medal by a member of the Refugee Olympic Team, winning bronze. Another member of the refugee team, breaker Manizha Talash, was disqualified for a flag that said “SAVE AFGHAN WOMEN.” Mothers of Indian and Pakistani javelin medallists each said they considered the other’s son as one of their own, while the Russians, following the invasion of Ukraine, were finally almost not here at all. Ukraine, beautifully, was.

Men’s basketball was spectacular, featuring one of the great games ever as Steph Curry and LeBron James put on a legendary show. On the track, Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis set another pole vault world record and called Stade de France “the most ridiculous crowd I’ve ever competed in front of.” The crowds were beacons for more than just the French. It was beautiful everywhere you went.

There were costs, of course. Suspected far-left anarchists set fire to major train lines early in the Games, while 45,000 armed police and another 10,000 French soldiers were deployed — at venues, in the streets, in malls and subways, everywhere. Once you saw one holding a machine gun with their index finger across the trigger, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice, you saw it everywhere. What were they looking for? Or who?

That became clear, too. The only people police or soldiers seemed to stop here were people with African or Middle Eastern skin — on bikes, at bank machines, anywhere they liked. Racial profiling was the underbelly of these Olympics. The Associated Press reported on how minorities were being limited and surveilled. This is a country that has endured both attacks from its far left and far right but also attacks in the name of al-Qaida and the Islamic State. This is their context; that doesn’t make it easy to stomach.

It is all the more confounding because the best part of this commercial enterprise, this global TV show, is the athletes and what they represent. The French far right, after deploring the opening ceremony, were said to be pleased by the daily playing of “La Marseillaise” and the patriotism at play.

If so, they missed the context. The Games are beautiful because they sell the human spirit, and it comes from everywhere. As the coincidentally named Mark England, Britain’s chef de mission, told Sky News: “We know that Britain is going through a tough time, but this British Olympic team is a mirror of the nation. We’ve got great diversity on the team, we’ve got a very, very strong ethnic mix, which we’re really proud of.” What he meant was, back in England racists were rampaging in the streets over lies, and in Paris the best of immigration was part of the pride of their nation.

As Tony Estanguet, the head of Paris 2024’s organizing committee, said: “I think it’s the best and most beautiful expression of humanity.” Or as the centre-left mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, told Le Monde a few days ago: “F—- the reactionaries, f—- this far right, f—- all of those who would like to lock us into a war of all against all. The far right’s messaging has been crushed by these Games and by the opening ceremony. Something incredibly positive is happening.”

We needed this. I don’t know a better way to say it, and it doesn’t apply to everyone or everything, clearly. But in a world full of politics built on anger and hate, these Games were an inoculation, even as they reflected and reinforced the problems that underpin the whole human experiment. It’s complex. It’s humans as they are.

And the core remained the core. At every Olympics, there are endings. Andy Murray ended his gorgeous tennis career here. The great Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge won the marathon in Rio and Tokyo but was 39 years old here and his back hurt, and eventually he simply walked for two kilometres surrounded by about 300 fans. Kipchoge arrived at the end in a van without his shoes, his shirt, his socks or his race number. In his final Olympics, the artist had given his tools away.

In wrestling, one of the oldest sports, that is tradition. When a wrestler retires they leave their shoes in the ring, and in Paris the king of the wrestlers, Cuban Mijaín López, wrestled for the fifth and final time at an Olympics. He won Greco-Roman gold at 130 kilograms for a fifth time, and nobody had ever done that before in one sport. Lopez left his shoes in the ring.

“I have been trying to show the entire world that, indeed, one can achieve many things with or without obstacles,” López said afterward. “I think that it all boils down to love. In everything you want to do with your life, you always have to have love.”

That was Paris 2024 at its best: people coming together, with all the complications and silliness and sadness and beautiful light that humans possess. Paris was a world and Paris was the world, and Paris is the city of love, and these Olympics are over. They were exactly as beautiful as we can be.