The Sochi Olympic torch song—the traditional relay of the Olympic flame from Greece, site of the original games, to this year's venue in Russia—hit a few flat notes along the way.

The torch suffered multiple flame-outs, including one en route to the Kremlin ("I wouldn't devote any special attention to what happened," a Russian official on the organizing committee commented). A torchbearer accidentally set himself on fire (he wasn't injured). And a 73-year-old man died of a heart attack shortly after doing his leg of the relay.

In the course of its chest-thumping 40,000-mile journey, the torch was plunged to the bottom of the world's deepest lake, Siberia's Lake Baikal; ferried to the North Pole by a nuclear-powered icebreaker; carted up