BEIJING — A pile of figure-skating rubble created by Russian misbehavior. A new Chinese champion – from California. An ace American skier who faltered and went home empty-handed. The end of the Olympic line for the world’s most renowned snowboarder. All inside an anti-COVID “closed loop” enforced by China’s authoritarian government.

The terrarium of a Winter Games that has been Beijing 2022 came to its end Sunday.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach stood together Sunday night as Beijing handed off to Milan-Cortina, site of the 2026 Winter Games. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” kicked off a notably Western-flavored show with Chinese characteristics as dancers with tiny, fiery snowflakes glided across the “Bird’s Nest” stadium.

By many mechanical measures, these Games were a success. There were no major unexpected logistical problems. TV ratings were down, but streaming viewership was up: By Saturday, NBC had streamed 3.5 billion minutes from Beijing, compared to 2.2 billion in South Korea in 2018.

As of Saturday, the segregated system that effectively turned Beijing into two cities – one sequestered, one proceeding very much as normal – had produced only 463 COVID positive tests among thousands of visitors entering the bubble since Jan. 23. Not surprisingly, the state-controlled media loved this.

Look deeper, though, and a different story emerges about these Games.

Internationally, many critiqued them as the “authoritarian Olympics” and denounced the IOC for holding them in concert with a government accused of gross human rights violations. Several Western governments boycotted by not sending any official delegations, though they sent athletes.

And then, of course, there were the Russians. And doping. Again.

The 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for using a banned heart medication. The result wasn’t announced by anti-doping officials until after she’d won gold as part of the team competition, even though the sample was taken weeks earlier.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared her to compete in the individual discipline, ruling that as a minor she had protected status. But Valieva, although heavily favored to win, fell several times during her free skate routine, landing her fourth place and prompting a cold reception from her embattled coach, Eteri Tutberidze.

“Rather than giving her comfort, rather than to try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance,” Bach said the next day, proclaiming his outrage.

Valieva’s Russian teammates took gold and silver, but on a night of drama, even the winners were in tears. The affair produced one possible legacy for Beijing: Valieva’s ordeal has inspired talk of raising the minimum age for Olympic skaters from 15 to 17 or 18.

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin also came to Beijing with high expectations, only to see them dashed when she failed to finish three races. She left without any medal at all. In an image to remember, the TV cameras captured Shiffrin sitting dejectedly on the snow, head in hands, for several minutes.

China swelled with pride, and its social media swelled with comments, as Eileen Gu, an America-born freestyle skier who chose to compete for China, her mother’s native country, became an international superstar. Her three medals – two gold, one silver – set a new record for her sport, and adulation for Gu literally broke the Chinese internet at one point, briefly crashing the servers of Sina Weibo, the massive Twitter-like network.

And Chinese snowboarder Su Yiming, a former child actor, won over the home crowd with a dominant gold medal big air performance.

Other moments to remember from Beijing 2022:

•  With a nearly perfect free skate and a record-setting short program, the 22-year-old figure skater Nathan Chen became the first American gold medalist in his sport since 2010.

•  Snowboarding’s best known rider, Shaun White, called it a career after finishing fourth in the halfpipe in his fifth Olympics, passing the torch to athletes like Su and the halfpipe gold medalist, Japan’s Ayumu Hirano.

•  American boarder and social media figure Chloe Kim won the gold in halfpipe for the second time, adding to her 2018 medal from Pyeongchang.

•  Norway, a country whose total population of 5 million is less than one half of one percent of the host country’s, led the medal count, as it often does. Russia was second, followed by Germany, Canada and the United States.