Watch: Three Torchbearers Fall Over While Carrying Olympic Torch in Brazil - Mpora

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Watch: Three Torchbearers Fall Over While Carrying Olympic Torch in Brazil

...and one guy tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher

Carrying the Olympic torch is an honour not bestowed on everyone. Running along with the famous torch in hand puts you in a coveted club with the likes of Mohammad Ali, Pele, Wayne Gretzky and a bunch of other folk who if not famous have at least done something relatively sound.

The Olympic torch and the flame within it is a symbol of the games themselves and an institution in its own right which represents the undying spirit of the Games, and that dates back right to, err, well actually, 1936, when the Nazis introduced it in Berlin.

ANYWAY.

Maybe best forget the tradition of the torch relay and focus on the modern day meaning of the thing – the togetherness, the solidarity and the sense of global unity and athleticism that it represents. Which of course, is why the entire universe finds it’s so funny when somebody carrying the torch takes a fall.

That’s exactly what has been happening in Brazil, and on more than one occasion! Now, we know the Brazilian Olympics have been becoming a bit of a slippery subject to navigate at times, but it’d be good if the torch bearers could at least stay on their feet.

Take Brazilian swimming coach Joao Reynaldo Costa Lima Neto for example, who would be a nightmare if he spoke in the third person at a dinner party. He just about managed to keep his head above water – geddit? it’s a swimming pun – when he was walking the streets of Pernambuco.

Our favourite thing about this video is that the officers next to him look more frightened that the torch might go out than they do about poor – deep breath – Joao Reynaldo Costa Lima Neto.

Next up on You’ve Been Framed: Olympic Torch Special, we’ve got Brazilian television reporter Henrique Arcoverde, who took a tumble which was wonderfully caught on camera by a house dweller nearby.

We do feel bad for poor Henrique of course. There’s something about the human mind that means you’re so, so much likelier to fall over when there’s a million people watching than you are when you’re by yourself.

Anyone who’s ever graduated or stepped up to collect some kind of award will know what I mean. You could, and do, walk wherever and however you want every minute of every day, but as soon as there are eyes on you, you’re convinced you’re somehow going to revert to your three-month old self and forget how to walk. It’s bizarre really.

Anyway, here’s Henrique falling over:

And last but not least, here’s a woman who seems to have been quite unjustly undone by her pacers.

The poor woman was running up the hill at a speed quite clearly a bit faster than she had intended to get out of bed that morning, and was trying to keep up with the officers around here. It didn’t end well.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! Since you made it to the end of our “people falling over while trying to make memories” segment, here’s the time a couple weeks ago when a dude with a fire extinguisher tried to put out the Olympic torch, and thankfully failed. Because that would’ve been shit.

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