Eric Liddell

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Eric Henry Liddell, circa 1923.

Eric Henry Liddell (January 16, 1902 – February 21, 1945, Chinese name 李爱锐, Li Airui) was a Scottish athlete and Rugby Union international and also the winner of the Men's 400 metres at the Olympic Games of 1924 held in Paris. He then served as a Protestant Christian missionary to China. He was portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire. His surname is Template:PronEng and rhymes with fiddle.

Biography

Eric Liddell, fondly called the "Flying Scotsman", was born in Tianjin (formerly known as Tienstin) (Chinese 天津) in North China, second son of the Rev & Mrs James Dunlop Liddell who were Scottish missionaries with the London Missionary Society. Liddell was born in 1902 and went to school in China until the age of five. At the age of six, he and his brother Rob, eight years old, were enrolled in Eltham College, Blackheath, England, a boarding school for the sons of missionaries. Their parents and sister Jenny returned to China. During the boys' time at Eltham their parents, sister and new brother Ernest came home on furlough two or three times and were able to be together as a family - mainly living in Edinburgh.

At Eltham, Liddell was an outstanding sportsman, being awarded the Blackheath Cup as the best athlete of his year, playing for the First XI and the First XV by the age of 15, later becoming captain of both the cricket and rugby union teams. His headmaster described him as being 'entirely without vanity'.

Eric and Rob were both exceptional athletes. Eric Liddell became well-known for being the fastest runner in Scotland while at Eltham. Newspapers carried the stories of his successful track meets. Many articles stated that he was a potential Olympic winner, and no one from their country had ever won a gold medal before.

Liddell was chosen to speak for Glasgow Students' Evangelical Union (GSEU) because he was so well-known. The GSEU hoped that he would draw large crowds, so that many people would hear the Gospel. The GSEU would send out a group of eight to ten men to an area where they would stay with the local population. It was Liddell's job to be the lead speaker and to evangelize the men of Scotland. Many came to see him because he was an accomplished athlete, but all heard his message of faith.

University of Edinburgh

In 1920, Eric joined his brother Rob at the University of Edinburgh to read Pure Science. Athletics and rugby played a large part in Eric's university life. He ran in the 100 yards and the 220 yards for Edinburgh University and later played for the Scottish national rugby union team. He played rugby for Edinburgh University and in 1922 made his way into the very strong Scottish backline. In 1922 and 1923, he played in seven out of eight Five Nations matches with A. L. Gracie. In 1924 he won the AAA Championships in athletics in the 100 yards (in a British record of 9.7 seconds: this record would not be broken for the next 35 years) and 220 yards (21.6 seconds). He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree after the Paris Olympiad in 1924.

Paris Olympics

During the summer of 1924, the Olympics were hosted by the city of Paris. Liddell was a committed Christian and refused to race on Sunday, with the consequence that he was forced to withdraw from the 100 metres race, his best event. The schedule had been published several months earlier, and his decision was made well before the Games began. Liddell spent the intervening months training for the 400 metres, an event in which he had previously excelled. Even so, his success in the 400m was largely unexpected. The day of 400 meters race came, and as Liddell went to the starting blocks, an American masseur slipped a piece of paper in his hand with a quotation from 1 Samuel 2:30, "Those who honor me I will honor." Liddell ran with that piece of paper in his hand. He not only won the race but broke the existing world record with a time of 47.6 seconds. A few days earlier Liddell had competed in the 200 meter finals, for which he received the bronze medal behind Americans Jackson Scholz and Charles Paddock, beating Harold Abrahams, who finished in sixth place. (This was the second and last race in which these two runners met.)

Service in China

After the Olympics and his graduation, Liddell continued to compete. Shortly after the 1924 Olympics, his final leg on the 4 x 400 meters race in a British Empire vs. USA contest helped secure the victory. A year later, in 1925, at the Scottish Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) meeting in Hampden Park in Glasgow, he equaled his own Scottish championship record of 10.0 seconds in the 100 yards, won the 220 yard contest in 22.2 seconds, won the 440 yard contest in 47.7, and participated in a winning relay team. He was only the fourth athlete ever to have won all three sprints at the SAAA, achieving this feat twice: in 1924 and 1925.

He returned to Northern China where he served as a missionary, like his parents, from 1925 to 1943 - first in Tianjin and later in Shaochang (Chinese 韶昌). During this time he continued to compete sporadically, including wins over members of the 1928 French and Japanese Olympic teams in the 200 and 400 metres at the South Manchurian Railway celebrations in China in 1928 and a victory at the 1930 North China championship.

Liddell's first job as a missionary was as a teacher at an Anglo-Chinese College (grades 1-12) for wealthy Chinese students. It was believed that by teaching the children of the wealthy that they themselves would later become influential figures in China and promote Christian values. He used his athletic experience to train the boys in a number of different sports. One of his many responsibilities was that of superintendent of the Sunday school at Union Church where his father was pastor. Liddell lived at 38 Chongqing Dao (formerly known as Cambridge Road) in Tianjin and a plaque still stands today to commemorate his former residence. He also helped build the Mingyuan Stadium in Tianjin. He suggested that it be copied exactly from Chelsea's football ground as he had run there previously, and this was said to be his favourite running venue.

Tianjin was controlled at that time by many foreign powers as they wanted to take advantage of the cheap raw materials in China. There were many concession areas taken by Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, America, Russia, Japan and Austro-Hungary. Most of the foreign architecture is still standing today and is worth a visit. The British concession area had English street names including Edinburgh Road, Glasgow Road and even Dumbarton Road. There were an estimated 3,000 Jewish people (escaping from Nazi persecution) in Tianjin which had a synagogue (which is still standing although unused), a Jewish school where they taught Hebrew and a Jewish social club called The Gunst.

During his first furlough in 1932, he was ordained as a minister of religion. On his return to China he married Florence Mackenzie (who was a lot younger than Eric) of Canadian missionary parentage in Tianjin in 1934. Liddell courted his future wife by taking her for lunch to the famous Kessling restaurant which is still open in Tianjin. They had three daughters, Patricia, Heather and Maureen. The school Eric taught at is still used as a school today. One of Liddell's daughters visited Tianjin in 1991 and presented the headmaster of the school with one of the medals that Eric had won for athletics.

In 1941 life in China was becoming so dangerous that the British Government advised British nationals to leave. Florence and the children left for Canada to stay with her family when Liddell accepted a new position at a rural mission station in Shaochang, which gave service to the poor. He joined his brother, Rob, who was a doctor there. The station was severely short of help and the missionaries who served there were exhausted. There was a constant stream of local people who came at all hours to get medical treatment. Liddell arrived at the station in time to relieve his brother who was ill, needing to go on furlough. Liddell suffered many hardships himself at this mission station. Eric's daughter remembers that her father was still so fast at running that he caught a wild hare for dinner during war rationing.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Japanese were at war. When the fighting reached Shaochang the Japanese took over the mission station. In 1943, he was interned at the Weihsien (now known as Weifang) Internment Camp with the members of the China Inland Mission Chefoo (now known as Yantai) School. Liddell became a leader at the camp and helped get it organized. Food, medicines, and other supplies ran short at the camp. There were many cliques in the camp and when some rich businessmen managed to smuggle in some eggs to the camp, Liddell shamed them into sharing them with the rest of the camp. Fellow missionaries were forming cliques, moralising, and acting selfishly. Eric kept himself busy by helping the elderly, teaching Bible classes, arranging games and also by teaching the children science. He was known to the children as Uncle Eric.

It was also claimed that one Sunday Liddell refereed a hockey match to stop fighting amongst the players (despite his earlier stand at the Olympics) as he was trusted not to take sides by the two teams. Liddell was also involved in preparing the food for the Japanese guards, again because he was trusted not to poison their food. One of Liddell's fellow internees later wrote a book about his experiences in the camp called "The Courtyard of the Happy Way" which gave details of all the remarkable characters in the camp. The writer stated that Liddell was "the finest Christian gentleman it has been my pleasure to meet. In all the time in the camp, I never heard him say a bad word about anybody." The camp was originally a missionary school named The Courtyard of the Happy Way. The Japanese removed many of the facilities from the camp to make it a proper prisoner of war camp. Later, Winston Churchill approved a prisoner exchange and Liddell was one of the prisoners chosen to go; however Liddell, unsurprisingly, gave his place to a pregnant woman.

In his last letter to his wife he talks about suffering a nervous breakdown in the camp due to overwork. In 1945, he died on February 21, sadly five months before liberation, as a result of a brain tumour, to which being overworked and malnourished probably hastened his demise. He was interred in the Mausoleum of Martyrs in Shijiazhuang, China. He was greatly mourned not only at the Weihsien internment Camp but also in Scotland as well. A fellow internee, Langdon Gilkey, was later to write, "The entire camp, especially its youth, was stunned for days, so great was the vacuum that Eric's death had left." Liddell's last words were supposed to have been "It's complete surrender."

Fifty-eight years after the 1924 Paris Olympics, Scotsman Allan Wells won the 100 metre dash at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. When asked after the victory if he had run the race for Harold Abrahams, the last 100 metre Olympic winner from Britain (in 1924), Wells quietly replied, "No, this one was for Eric Liddell."

Eric Liddell was voted in The Scotsman newspaper in a recent poll as the most popular athlete Scotland has ever produced. Upon Liddell's death, much of Scotland mourned his passing.

Memorial

In 1991, a memorial headstone, made from Isle of Mull granite was unveiled at Liddell's previously unmarked grave in Weifang, erected by Edinburgh University. A few simple words taken from the Book of Isaiah, formed the inscription: "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary." The city of Weifang, as part of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the internment camp, commemorated the life of Liddell by laying a wreath at the memorial headstone marking his grave in 2005.

Chariots of Fire

The 1981 film Chariots of Fire commemorated the Olympic triumphs and contrasted the lives and viewpoints of both Liddell and Harold Abrahams, with Ian Charleson portraying Liddell. One inaccuracy in the movie surrounds Liddell's refusal to race in the 100 metres. The film portrays Liddell as finding out that one of the heats was to be held on a Sunday as he was boarding the boat that would take the British Olympic team across the English Channel on their way to Paris. Actually, the schedule and Liddell's decision were known several months in advance, though his refusal to participate remains significant. (Liddell had also been selected to run as a member of the 4 x 100 relay and 4 x 400 relay teams at the Olympics but also declined these spots as their heats, too, were to be run on a Sunday.)

The scene in the movie where Liddell fell early in a 440 yard race in a Scotland-France dual meet and made up a 20-metre deficit to win the race is, however, historically accurate except for the fact that the actual race was during a Triangular Contest meet between Scotland, England and Ireland at Stoke-on-Trent in England in July 1923. Liddell was knocked to the ground several strides into the race. He hesitated, got up and went after his opponents, now twenty metres ahead. He caught the leaders shortly before the finishing line and collapsed in exhaustion after crossing the tape.

Liddell's unorthodox running style as portrayed in the movie, with his head back and his mouth wide open, is also said to be historically accurate. At an athletics championship in Glasgow, a visitor watching the 440 yard final in which Liddell was a long way from the leaders at the start of the last lap (of a 220 yard track) remarked to a Glasgow native that Liddell would be hard put to win the race. The Glaswegian native merely replied, "His head's no' back yet." Liddell then threw his head back and with mouth wide open caught and passed his opponents to win the race.

Trivia

See also

References

Books

  • Magnusson, Sally. The Flying Scotsman Quartet Books, 1981. ISBN 0704333791
  • Swift, Catherine. Eric Liddell Bethany House Publishers, 1990. ISBN 1-55661-150-1
  • Caughey, Ellen. Eric Liddell: Olympian and Missionary Barbour Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57748-667-6
  • Gilkey, Langdon. Shantung Compound Harper & Row, 1966, pp. 192-193. ISBN 0-06-063113-9
  • McCasland, David. Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography Of The Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots Of Fire. Discovery House Publishers, 2003. ISBN 1572931302
  • Eric Liddell, The disciplines of the Christian life, Abingdon Press, 1985.
  • Eric Liddell, The Sermon on the Mount : notes for Sunday School teachers.
  • Janet & Geoff Benge. Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold.

External links

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