Eric Liddell

Eric Liddell was born in Tianjin, China, to Scottish missionary parents and sent to boarding school in England at six. He was a natural athlete with an ungainly style, head thrown back and arms flailing, and by the time he was at Edinburgh University he had played rugby for Scotland seven times and was the fastest sprinter in Britain.

When the timetable for the 1924 Paris Olympics was published, the heats of the 100 metres, his best event, fell on a Sunday. Liddell, a devout Christian, said he would not run on the Sabbath. He was called unpatriotic and a traitor. Rather than argue he spent the months before the Games training for the 400 metres, a distance he had rarely raced.

In Paris he ran the 400 metres final flat out from the gun, a tactic considered reckless, and won in a world record 47.6 seconds. He also took bronze in the 200 metres. He was 22 and at the peak of his powers.

The next year he went back to China as a missionary teacher and stayed through war and invasion, sending his pregnant wife and daughters to Canada in 1941 while he remained. In 1943 the Japanese interned him at Weihsien camp, where fellow prisoners remembered him organising games for children and giving away his food. He died there of a brain tumour in February 1945, months before the camp was liberated.