With the Beijing Olympics still fresh in our minds we should remember Eric Liddell, the Scottish international sporting hero who was born in China and died there. Oddly, his name has been immortalised primarily for the race he did not run (in the film “Chariots of fire”) but we should also honour the man for the uplifting way in which he lived his life.
At school in England, Eric was outstanding at athletics, cricket and rugby union, yet his headmaster described him as being “entirely without vanity”. Sport continued to play a large part in his life at Edinburgh University, where he studied pure science.
Such was his running ability that he competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric was a Christian and refused to run on Sunday, with the consequence that he was forced to withdraw from the 100m race, his strongest event. He did, however, achieve an unexpected gold medal victory and a new world record in the men’s 400m.
A year later Eric returned to China, where he spent the rest of his life as a missionary. There he ran the greatest race of his life against difficult circumstances, war, uncertainty and disease. In 1937 Japan invaded China.
In 1941, the British government advised British nationals to leave China and Eric’s wife and three daughters moved to Canada when Eric accepted a new position at a rural mission station, which gave service to the poor. Eric suffered many hardships in this post. He was still so fast at running that he once caught a wild hare for dinner during rationing.
Subsequently Eric was interned in a Japanese camp, where he lived out his Christian faith. He served by helping the elderly, taking Bible classes, arranging games and teaching the children science. Some inmates bribed guards into giving them extra rations. Eric shamed these miscreants into sharing the food with other internees.
He was involved in preparing food for the guards because he was trusted not to poison them. Eric never had a bad word to say about anybody. He had the opportunity for release in a prisoner exchange but gave his place to a pregnant woman.
He died in the camp from a brain tumour aged 43 in February 1945. In 1991 Edinburgh University erected a memorial headstone at Eric’s previously unmarked grave.
