Vanderlei de Lima, who the lit Olympic cauldron to ignite the first Games in South America, is not a gold medalist. Nor a legendary Brazilian champion.
The Olympic creed states: "The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well."

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, a defrocked Irish priest infamously grabbed de Lima with about four miles left, taking him into a crowd along the route for a few seconds before a 53-year-old Athens salesman hopped over a barrier to help pull the intruder off de Lima.

But de Lima held on for the bronze medal, memorably blowing kisses in the final stretch and breaking into an airplane motion with his arms while deliberately swerving back and forth. He showed no disdain toward what had happened 20 minutes earlier.

“It was a moment of overcoming obstacles and of dreams coming true,” de Lima recalled in a 2008 NBC Olympics profile.
De Lima would be honored later that night at the medal ceremony before the Closing Ceremony. In addition to his bronze, he was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal, named after the founder of the modern Olympics, for “exceptional demonstration of fair play and Olympic values.”
That medal is exponentially rarer than a gold medal – given on average less than once per Olympics since its creation in 1964.
And now de Lima is the first person to complete this triple – Olympic medal, Pierre de Coubertin medal and final torch bearer.
Taken from https://www.iaaf.org/news/news/vanderlei-de-lima-the-story-of-a-man-that-g