Patricia Russell was just six when she said goodbye to her father Eric Liddell for the last time, but she has fond memories of the athlete immortalized in the Oscar-winning film “Chariots of Fire.”
Russell, a witty 88-year-old former nurse, was born long after her Scottish missionary father took 400m gold a century ago at the 1924 Paris Olympics after famously refusing to run his favorite 100m because the heats were on a Sunday .
On Wednesday, Matthew Hudson-Smith bids to become the first Briton since Liddell 100 years ago to be crowned Olympic champion in the event and in the same city.
As the 1981 film shows, British teammate Harold Abrahams won the 100 m gold in Liddell’s absence.
Team bosses tried to persuade him to change his mind, but Russell said that although her father was “no Bible man”, Sunday was indeed a day of rest in Scotland at the time.
“He was really more of a liberal Christian,” she told AFP in a telephone interview from her home near Toronto, Canada.
“He certainly didn’t give up his principles for the gold medal.
“I think if they had convinced him to run, he wouldn’t have won. It would have been a clash because he would have run thinking he had sold his soul.”
In 1991, Russell gave Liddell’s medals – his 400m gold and 200m bronze sent to him after the Games – to the University of Edinburgh, who kept them.
The mother of three remembers another race in China, where the family lived when Liddell was a missionary.
“It was a race between children and fathers… I had to hand him a handkerchief and he finished the race.
“I came down the track but I had a lovely handkerchief and I wanted to keep it so I wouldn’t give it to him.
“I didn’t get a lecture from him, but he told me that a handkerchief might be nice, but the race was about teamwork.
“Sometimes those things stick.
While his work in China took him away from home for many years, his last idyllic family summer vacation took place in Carcant, Scotland in 1940.
It was all the more special that Canadian mother Florence, who was nine years younger than Liddell, Patricia and sister Heather had to risk a wartime crossing of the Atlantic.
“I remember Carcant being overrun with rabbits,” she said.
While walking with his daughters, Liddell caught one.
“He shook it and said ‘rabbit pie for dinner,'” Russell recalled. “Heather was a bit more sensitive and cried so he said to Mum ‘I’m not going to do it again’. But imagine the speed he had to catch the rabbit!
The first leg of the journey back to China in a convoy of 50 ships provided a stark reminder of the fragility of life when submarines sank five ships.
“I said to my dad ‘we should go and help those in the water’ but he said ‘no, it’s too risky’ and someone pointed to the periscope.
“As kids you don’t realize how serious the situation is, but our parents…told us ‘do exactly as you’re told and don’t fool around’.”
- ‘Shocked’ –
With Florence pregnant with her third daughter, Maureen, and Japan increasingly belligerent, Liddell decided it was best for her and the children to return to Canada in 1941.
Russell remembers her father taking her on his knee and saying, “Be a good girl. You’re the oldest, take care of your mom, sister and baby until you see me again.”
Those would be the last words he said to her.
Liddell ended up in an internment camp after Japan entered World War II, and letters – limited to 25 words – from him were sporadic. In one case, every word was blacked out by a Japanese censor.
However, Russell always thought that “her fun, twinkling dad” would walk through the door until he returned home to deathly calm in Toronto on May 1, 1945.
“I asked grandma where mom was and went upstairs to the bedrooms.
“Mum was sitting there with Maureen and Heather and she said ‘Dad’s died’ (of a brain tumour). I said ‘no, no, I think they’ve made a mistake’.”
As the world celebrated, just before Victory in Europe Day, her mother was “in shock, a widow with three small children”.
Russell said her grief over her father’s death was eased by meeting former internees many years later.
“I met kids who were at that camp and they told me how his presence changed their lives.
