SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The Olympic torch relay certainly endured its share of indignities this summer as it wended across this vast country on its way to Rio de Janeiro.
Government employees protesting unpaid wages sought to disrupt its progress. Pranksters tried to extinguish the flame by tossing buckets of water. In one especially embarrassing episode, a soldier shot dead a jaguar — the Rio Games’ official mascot — after it escaped its handlers during a ceremony in the Amazonian city of Manaus.
But the antipathy many Brazilians feel toward the Olympics briefly vanished when onlookers cheered Hanan Dacka, a 12-year-old Syrian refugee, as she jogged through nation’s capital, Brasília, with the Olympic flame in her hand.