The Runner Who Finished on a Different Track

Eric Liddell won Olympic gold in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Games — a moment immortalized in Chariots of Fire. But Liddell's greatest race had nothing to do with a stadium.

Within a year of his Olympic triumph, Liddell left Scotland for China as a missionary. For nearly twenty years, he taught, preached, and served in increasingly dangerous conditions. When Japan invaded, he could have evacuated — his fame guaranteed safe passage. Instead, he stayed.

Liddell spent his final years in the Weihsien internment camp in Shandong Province, organizing games for children, tutoring teenagers in science, and carrying coal for elderly prisoners. Fellow inmates remembered him as tireless and selfless, even as his own health deteriorated from a brain tumor he didn't know he had.

On February 21, 1945 — just months before liberation — Liddell died at forty-three. His last words to a camp nurse were simply: "It's complete surrender."

Paul wrote to Timothy from a Roman prison, his own death approaching: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Like Paul, Liddell could have claimed earthly glory. Like Paul, he chose a harder track. And like Paul, he discovered that the Lord stood at his side and gave him strength — not to escape suffering, but to finish well. The crown waiting at the end was never made of gold. It was made of righteousness.