When Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell learned that the 100 meter heats at the 1924 Paris Olympics would be run on a Sunday, he refused to take part, even though the 100 was his strongest distance, and news of his decision travelled around the world. He spent the next months training for the 400 meters instead, took bronze in the 200, and then, running blind from the outside lane in the 400 final, won gold in an Olympic record 47.6 seconds. “With the help of God, I ran the next 200m even more strongly,” he later said. Liddell then went back to China as a missionary and died at 43 in a Japanese internment camp in February 1945, just months before the war ended.
