The final of the race was held later that afternoon. The race played out much as the heat had in the morning, but with just one difference. This time, it was Eric Liddell who burst through the finish tape to win the race and Innes Stewart who was close behind. Eric had won the 100-yard dash. The crowd roared its approval.
The next day it was time for the 220-yard dash, Innes Stewart’s specialty race. Innes was sure that no one in Scotland could beat him, and he was right. Eric came in second, losing by exactly one inch! The crowd went wild with excitement, as though it knew it was seeing not one but two of Scotland’s greatest future athletes. Eric stood proudly on the podium as he received his prize. He was thrilled to have a first and a second place in the two races. As the crowd clapped and cheered, it didn’t know it then, but it had just seen something no one else would ever see on Scottish soil again: Eric Liddell coming in second in a race. From that time on, Eric won every single race he ever entered in Scotland.
Eric expected everything to return to normal after his win. Things always had after he’d won a race at Eltham College. However, as he soon found out, things were a little different at university. As of May 1921, Eric Liddell was the top 100-yard sprinter and the second fastest 220-yard runner in the whole university. This meant that he was Edinburgh University’s best hope for a medal at the Scottish University Sports Competition in two months. As such, he had a duty to run for his university. While he worried about his studies suffering, Eric knew he had no choice; he had to compete. Besides, he was enjoying running.
The University Athletics Club decided that Bill Harvey wasn’t experienced enough as a coach for its top runner. Bill was replaced by Tom McKerchar, a good coach with a lot of experience. Tom McKerchar took Eric to Powderhill Stadium, where he trained several other top Scottish athletes. The first time Eric walked into the stadium, he nearly walked right back out again. A group of experienced runners were training, and they looked completely silly to Eric. To warm up, they were running in place on tiptoe, like oversized ballerinas, waving their arms wildly and rolling their shoulders at the same time. Eric told himself there was no way he was ever going to do that in front of a crowd.
Tom McKerchar had agreed to coach Eric because of his win at the university competition, but as he studied Eric’s terrible running style more closely, he wondered how Eric had managed to win at all. Eric had been told many times that his running style was odd. He would fling his head back and pull his arms forward almost as if he were boxing at some invisible target. He lost count of how many times Tom McKerchar tried to make him run looking straight ahead with his arms gliding smoothly at his sides. But no matter how hard he tried, Eric simply couldn’t change. However, Tom McKerchar did succeed in getting Eric to do the “ballerina warm-up,” and before long, Eric was prancing around on tiptoe before a race, like everyone else.
The Scottish University Sports Competition quickly rolled around. Tom McKerchar was pleased with Eric’s speed, if not his style. Eric won the 100-yard sprint, with Innes Stewart coming in second. Their one-two finishes helped Edinburgh University earn the proud honor of having the best athletics team in Scotland.
In two track and field competitions, Eric Liddell had proved himself to be a top athlete, and the more he ran, the more he won. Time after time he broke records. He ran the 100-yard dash in 10.2 seconds and the 220 in 21.8 seconds, a full two-tenths of a second better than the previous record. He also ran the 440-yard (quarter-mile) race in 52.6 seconds, so much faster than it had ever been run before at the Scottish Inter-University Games that it took another thirty-five years before anyone bettered it.
Before long, Eric had a group of supporters who traveled from place to place to watch him run. He found this embarrassing at first, but he also thought it was a nice gesture for so many people to give up their free time to come and encourage him.
As impressed as these supporters were with Eric’s speed, they were more impressed with his attitude. Although he wanted to win each race and trained hard to do so, he always had a good attitude towards the other competitors. Before a race he would shake each contestant’s hand and wish him success. He never said “good luck,” because he didn’t believe luck had much to do with winning a race. For him, it was skill and training that won races.
Other gestures also showed his good sportsmanship. Back then, at the beginning of a race, a runner would dig himself two small holes in the turf or cinder track just behind the starting line. Into these holes, the runner would place his toes to push off and get a better start. Eric used a small steel trowel for this purpose, and when he’d finished digging his holes, he would always offer the trowel to the other runners to use. On one occasion, another runner from Edinburgh University had drawn the outside lane in the 440-yard race. The 440-yard race was one lap around the track, and runners hated to be in the outside lane for it. There were few markings on the track, and the person running in the outside lane was likely to get bumped around. So Eric quietly swapped lanes with the other runner. The change in lane made no difference to him; he still won.
With each victory came a prize, and soon the Liddell family was facing a problem it had never encountered before: keeping valuable items in the house. It didn’t take long before the Liddells’ house on Gillespie Crescent in Edinburgh was brimming with Eric’s prizes and trophies. There were the usual gold and silver cups and bowls, along with cake stands, clocks, leather suitcases, vases, enough watches for everyone in the family to have three apiece, cases of cutlery, pens, salad bowls, and silver tea sets. With so much gold and silver in the house, Eric’s mother worried that the house would be burglarized. She hid many of the most valuable prizes under her bed each night. But the house was never broken into, and Eric just kept collecting prizes each time he ran.
Running wasn’t the only thing Eric excelled at. Because of his speed, he won a place on the Edinburgh University rugby team. From his earliest days at Eltham College, he’d enjoyed playing rugby. His position was on the wing. A rugby team consists of fifteen players, eight forwards and seven backs. After the ball is freed from a ruck or scrum by the eight forwards using their feet, it is picked up by the halfback and passed along the line of backs. At the end of the back line are the wings, one on the left side of the field and one on the right. When the wing finally receives the ball, it is his job to try to get himself and the ball as far up the field towards the goal line as possible. All the while, the opposing team is looking to tackle whoever has the ball. With his speed, the position on the wing was tailor-made for Eric. When he got the ball, he seemed able to make incredible plays and gain valuable field position for his side.
In his second year at Edinburgh, the university rugby team toured England, winning six of its seven games. Because of Eric’s outstanding play in these games, the selectors for the Scottish national rugby team named Eric to their side.
Rugby was and still is a matter of great national pride to the people of the British Isles. Fierce competition exists between the Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and English teams. In 1922, Scotland played Wales at Arms Park in Cardiff, Wales. The Scots had not won a match against the Welsh since 1890! Eric and the other Scottish wing, Leslie Gracie, were the stars of the game. They played a masterful game of rugby, and when the final whistle sounded, Scotland had beaten Wales eleven points to eight. Amazingly, when the game was over, the losing Welsh team scooped Eric Liddell and Leslie Gracie onto their shoulders and paraded them around the park. Everyone, even the losing team, it seemed, appreciated the skill of the two Scottish wings. In the grandstand, both the Welsh and the Scottish fans cheered.
Between running and rugby, Eric was very busy. It would have been easy for him to let his studies slide, but somehow he managed to do everything. He even managed to be in the top three students in his classes.
In 1922, after one year at home, Eric’s parents’ furlough came to an end, and Eric’s parents returned to China with Jenny and Ernest. It was a difficult time for Eric and Robert. They had both become used to being part of a “normal” family, and it was hard for them to leave that behind and move into a hostel. Eric comforted himself with the fact that Robert would still be around for another year before he graduated as a doctor and returned to China.
Eric laughed at one piece of advice his departing mother gave him. Even though he was only twenty years old, his fine blond hair was beginning to recede, and his mother feared that his forehead would soon meet up with the small balding patch on the back of his head. No one else in the family had gone bald that young, and Eric’s mother put it down to taking too many hot showers after athletics meetings and rugby games. Eric wondered what his mother thought he should do after playing rugby on a muddy field for an hour and a half.
Not only was Eric the only blond (and balding) member of his family, he was also the only one who didn’t like to talk about his faith. Even his parents weren’t sure what he thought about Christianity; he kept the whole matter to himself. He always went to church on Sunday, read his Bible, and lived a good life, but for some reason, he didn’t feel comfortable talking to others about God. On the other hand, Robert was a very enthusiastic Christian. Not long after their parents had left for China, an evangelistic campaign was organized for all of Scotland and Robert eagerly signed up to be a part of it.
The purpose of the evangelistic campaign was to use university and high school students to share the gospel message with people all across Scotland. During their weekends and vacations, students would sleep in local churches and spend their days looking for people to invite to their nightly meetings. Many of these meetings were very successful, especially in the rural areas. The large cities, though, were much tougher. Working-class men just weren’t interested in what a group of university students had to say. They were perfectly happy with their drinking, brawling, and gambling. No matter what they tried, the students couldn’t seem to come up with an effective way to get their message across to these working-class people.
A group of students from the University of Glasgow moved into a church in the industrial town of Armadale, halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, to share the gospel message there. They, too, soon found themselves wrestling with the problem of getting their message across to working-class people. One member of this group was David Thomson, or DP, as he was known to most people. As DP thought about the problem, he had an inspiration. Like so many men in Scotland, the men of Armadale loved rugby. So DP thought that the students should challenge the local men to a game of rugby. Everyone agreed it was a good idea, and a date was set for the match. Many local men showed up for the game, and they played hard. In the end, the students narrowly won. It was a victory in other ways, too. The students made friends with a few of the men who had played in or watched the rugby game and invited them to their meetings.
DP was pleased with the success of his idea on one hand and frustrated by it on the other. Rugby was obviously a big draw for these men, but the students couldn’t play games everywhere they went. A game took too long to organize, and some of the students had been hurt while playing. Yet DP felt that rugby was an important key in getting to know the local men. Then inspiration hit him again. He had been on several evangelistic campaign trips with Robert Liddell, and the two men had become friends. DP knew that Robert was a keen Christian and that his younger brother was none other than Eric Liddell, the great Scottish rugby star! If DP could persuade Robert to get Eric to speak to the men of Armadale, hundreds would turn out to hear such a famous person.
