Down with
everything: the new
American mantra
Tanned and smiling,
Mr Blair arrives
among us
Villages of
Scotland:
(3) Thornhill
Easing the
pain of
the Church
R D Kernohan
on the future of institutional religion
Get SR free in
your inbox three
times a week
Click here
Today’s banner
Loch Melfort, Argyll
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
The great ‘Chariots
of Fire’ was the
purest hokum
John Cameron
When I was starting to make a name for myself in athletics, my chemistry master, the late James Haig, informed me that he had once raced against Eric Liddell. I replied as polite school boys did in the 1950s with: ‘Gosh, sir, that’s amazing’, without being entirely sure why he recalled the occasion with such evident pride and pleasure.
That evening my father told me of the Scottish sprinter who refused to run the 100m on a Sunday at the Olympics but, inspired by God and the pipes, had won the 400m instead. I was intrigued and read everything I could about this extraordinary sportsman and spoke to the many people – such the legendary runner Dunky Wright – who had known him.
The fact is that ‘Chariots of Fire’ was a great film but as a historical record it was the purest hokum and based on the ‘recollections’ of his great rival Harold Abrahams. Liddell was an international rugby player with a herculean physique and built like a modern running-back in American football – a big, blinding-fast, powerhouse. He was a strong, silent, ‘muscular Christian’ and the choice of the physical lightweight Ian Charleson to portray him as a sanctimonious wimp was miscasting of a high order.
Far from trying to dissuade him, the Scottish churches and his family were his greatest supporters because it showed a man could be both religious and a sporting hero. The idea that he ran with his head thrown back as shown in the film is absurd: it would have hindered his breathing and he would have run off the track into the crowd. Also, the scenes of him falling down after a race à la Roger Bannister are as silly as his flailing arms – he was a rugby player and used to running with the ball.
As a member of the international squad I got to know Harold Abrahams who was by then the team manager and the choice of the swarthy, lanky Irish actor Ben Cross was perfect. He was just as perverse and belligerent as the character Cross portrayed but the film’s suggestion that the master of Trinity College was anti-semitic is completely untrue. The college was furious and when the producers refused to remove the slur, it refused to let them film the race at Trinity Great Court – it had to be staged at Marlborough.
Incidentally, the first person to run around the college courtyard in the time it takes for the clock to strike 12 was, in fact, the runner ‘defeated’ in the film: Lord David Burghley. He remained obsessed by his ethnicity and a team-mate once said: ‘Harold thinks we hate him because he’s Jewish – totally untrue – we hate him because he’s Harold’.
The famous race when Liddell beat Abrahams took place in 1923 and his time (0.1 sec outside the world best) stood as a British record till broken by Peter Radford in 1960. It was after this race that Liddell introduced a despairing Abrahams to Sam Mussabini, the Arab trainer who had coached Reggie Walker, the 1908 Olympic 100m gold medalist. The controversy over Abrahams’ use of Mussabini was not his professional status but his reputation – of which Eric was totally unaware – for doping his sprinters and cyclists.
Far from being surprised on board the ferry by the news of the 100m heats being held on a Sunday, Liddell had known about it for many months and was down for the 400m.
Left with no option but to continue sprinting, he poured it on round the
last bend and into the final straight; however, the American runners
were beginning to close.
John Cameron is a physicist and former Church of Scotland parish minister
website design by Big Blue Dogwebsite development by NSD Web