RIO DE JANEIRO — Alone in his apartment in south London, a 69-year-old man named Neil Horan watched a middle-of-the night broadcast of the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics. Like other viewers, he wondered which Brazilian would get the honor of lighting the Olympic caldron.
And when he saw that it would be Vanderlei de Lima, best known for being accosted by a spectator while leading the 2004 Olympic marathon in Athens, he was aghast.
It was Horan who jumped onto the course near the 22-mile mark and shoved de Lima into the crowd in Athens — “Put him aside like a rugby tackle,” he recalled in a phone conversation on Saturday — and was blamed for de Lima finishing third.