Eric Liddel – Profile of a Warrior Athlete
Every year on New Year’s Day I watch the movie “Chariots of Fire”.The movie is set in Europe in the mid 1920s and culminates with the Paris Olympics of 1924. There are two main characters, Eric Liddel and Harold Abrahams.
In the movie, Liddel is a missionary and is torn between running for Scotland and training for the Olympic Games and returning to China where he has lived and worked for most of his life. As it turns out, he decides to run, with the main objective of using his natural ability to serve something bigger than his own self interests.
Liddel runs with amazing passion, and often takes the opportunity to integrate desire to serve others into his racing and training by meeting those that come to see him and visiting and speaking at churches.
Liddel is selected to represent GB in the Olympic games, but runs into a snag when he finds out that his first race is on a Sunday, which conflicts with his beliefs. When he is confronted by the most powerful men of Great Brittan he stands his ground. One of those that tried to convince him to compromise said afterward:
The “lad”, as you call him, is a true man of principles and a true athlete. His speed is a mere extension of his life, its force. We sought to sever his running from himself.
Eventually both Liddel and Abrahams won gold medals in the Paris Olympics, and went on to live successful lives by their own definitions.
As I watched the movie this year, that quote stuck struck me, “a true man of principles and a true athlete”.
That, in my mind is the definition of the Warrior Athlete.
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