This Russian Girl is (Probably Not) on Fire

Dmitry Chernyshenko, the Russian head of the 2014 Sochi Olympics today denied reports that a 13-year-old girl was burned during an Olympic Torch exchange

On Monday, the country that gave us krokodil and dash cams released Yet Another YouTube Video Featuring Fire and Potential Bodily Harm. The video, aptly named “Exploded Olympic Torch,” featured a young woman receiving the Sochi 2014 Olympic torch in Kostroma (it’s about 211 miles northeast of Moscow). The caption said the event took place on Friday.

Chernyshenko told RIA Novosti, “The ’13-year-old girl’ was actually an adult from the legal branch of the Sochi-2014 organizing committee.” According to the Moscow Times, Chernyshenko said that there was a powerful flame, but it was quickly extinguished before a replacement was provided, allowing the relay to get back under way.

Russian online magazine Gazeta-ru and Voice of Russia previously reported that the young girl sustained burns when an Olympic torch “exploded in her hand,” and was treated for minor burns. Amazingly or charred protagonist ignored the pain and “ran the remaining part of the distance.”

Unfortunately the video is pretty blurry and shot vertically (seriously for the love of God when it looks like another human being is catching fire, please flip your phone horizontally so we can all get a better view on the Internets, people! Going to forgive you for the low-res quality because you’re in the middle of nowhere, but Russia, your penchant for endless suffering can only go so far), so it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. There’s definitely a menacing, potentially out-of-control flame, and what looks like a female human being, but whether substantial human flesh was on fire in difficult to determine.