The Man After the Gold Medal
Most people know Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire — the Scottish sprinter who refused to run on a Sunday at the 1924 Paris Olympics and won gold in the 400 metres instead. What most people don't know is what came after.
Liddell returned to China, where he'd been born to missionary parents, and spent the next two decades as a teacher, rural missionary, and eventually a father of three daughters — Patricia, Heather, and Maureen.
The Decision That Cost Everything
By 1941, with Japan occupying large parts of China, the situation for foreign nationals became dangerous. Liddell's wife Florence was pregnant with their third child. He sent his family to safety in Canada — knowing he might never see them again.
He stayed. Not out of stubbornness or heroism, but because the Chinese communities he served had no one else. He continued teaching, organising medical supplies, and caring for people in increasingly dire circumstances.
In 1943, Liddell was interned by the Japanese at Weihsien camp in Shandong. He spent two years in the camp, where he became known not for his Olympic fame but for his care of the children there. He organised games, taught science classes, refereed sports matches, and mediated disputes between exhausted, frightened adults.
Father From a Distance
Throughout his internment, Liddell wrote letters to his daughters that he couldn't send. He drew pictures for them. He kept notes about what he wanted to teach them when he got home. Fellow inmates later recalled finding him at night, sitting alone, whispering conversations with children who were an ocean away.
One of the most poignant surviving documents is a letter he managed to get out to Florence: "Give the children my love. Tell them Daddy is thinking about them every single day."
Liddell died in the camp on 21 February 1945, five months before liberation. A brain tumour. He was forty-three.
What His Daughters Carried
Patricia Liddell later said her father's legacy wasn't the gold medal. It was that he lived for others — including his children — even when he couldn't be with them. "He was being a father to every child in that camp, because he couldn't be a father to us."
His three daughters all grew up shaped by a man they barely remembered in person but knew through letters, through stories from camp survivors, and through the life he'd lived when no one famous was watching.
What This Means for You
Being a parent doesn't always mean being in the room. Liddell's story is a reminder that the love you pour out — even from a distance, even when circumstances separate you from your children — has a reach you may never see. The letters you write, the prayers you say, the way you treat other people's children when your own aren't there — all of it counts.