The untold stories of Chariots of Fire, according to Eric Liddell’s own daughter

Exclusive: Patricia Liddell-Russell and the film’s producer explain how the iconic beach scene very nearly never happened

It is a story that prompts a shake of the head and an audible chuckle from Patricia Liddell-Russell, the 89-year-old daughter of the iconic Olympic champion and missionary Eric Liddell.
“The music was wonderful – it really made the film for many people – but it so nearly never was,” she says, referring to the Vangelis masterpiece that bookended the Chariots of Fire movie which, to this day, remains the only real-life sports story to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Lord Puttnam, the producer who masterminded the dramatisation of Liddell’s feats at the 1924 Paris Olympics, nods when I ask him to take up the story on what is now the 100th anniversary of those Games.
“Vangelis kept complaining that he wanted to do better,” he says, of the Greek musician who composed the soundtrack. It had reached a stage, however, whereby the film was complete, a choice had been made and the emotive opening beach scene had already been set to another Vangelis piece called ‘L’Enfant’.
Puttnam was then eating at a London restaurant one night when a call came through. Vangelis needed to see him urgently and so, midway through the meal, Puttnam suddenly found himself being ushered into the back of a Rolls-Royce which also had a cassette player.
Vangelis then played the extraordinary new theme he had created. “Every hair on the back of my neck just stood up,” says Puttnam. “It was incredible. But do you know what else I thought? ‘You f—er. It’s too late’. We had finished the film.”
The titles at the start and finish of the movie, however, were only added at the end of the process and so there was still an opportunity. And, when Vangelis’s new option was laid over those evocative slow-motion pictures of runners moving through the sand, the decision was made. “There was no comparison – but the theme that everyone thinks of is literally only over the front and end titles,” says Puttnam.
Another largely unknown and unexpected stroke of fate concerns the images that sit behind the music. They were originally shot on a sunny, clear and calm day in St Andrews. “And, that night, I got a phone call from one of the labs saying, ‘Really bad news, one of the negatives has crashed, sand has got in’,” recalls Puttnam.
“So we went back to shoot it again. It was much more blustery, and the sea was actually more interesting. You had all this white water and the wind whipping through Nigel Havers’ hair.” Arguably the greatest opening sequence to any movie was complete.
The title was initially simply ‘Runners’ but the screenwriter Colin Welland then attended the funeral in 1978 of Harold Abrahams, the other British sprinter around whom the film was based. The hymn Jerusalem, which has the words ‘Bring me my chariot of fire’ in the final line of the third verse, was sung and they now had their title.
In Liddell, the winner in Paris of the men’s 400m, they also had one of the most compelling human narratives in Olympic history. Even now, a century on, his refusal to compete in his preferred 100m because it was scheduled to take place on a Sunday, resonates with contemporary athletes. “Everything about him is amazing,” says the American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who will defend her 400m hurdles crown in Paris, and is herself a committed Christian. “I just connected to the freedom he felt to use the gift that God gave him to run. It’s a beautiful, beautiful movie.”
Eilidh Doyle, an Olympic medallist in Rio, was also blown away by the monumental athletic achievement of Liddell changing up from 100m to 400m and yet still prevailing with a world record. “That’s huge,” she says.
Patricia, who was Liddell’s eldest daughter, is now the last surviving relative with personal memories of a man who, since his death aged just 43 in a Japanese internment camp in China, has assumed an almost mythical status. In our conversation, she is keen to emphasise her father’s modesty and some of the fun they experienced despite such a traumatic period in global history. “We were not a flashy family,” she says.
The son of missionaries, Liddell had been only 22 at the time of the Paris Olympics, having starred the previous two years as a winger in the Five Nations for Scotland’s rugby union team. His sprawling running style – head back, mouth open and arms in the air – would prompt laughter among some of the Americans when they first saw him. Abrahams, the team-mate who won 100m gold in his absence, however, already knew very differently. “People may shout their heads off about his appalling style. Let them. He gets there,” he said.
Although the Sunday scheduling also ruled out Liddell’s participation in the two relays, he did add a 200m bronze to the 400m gold that he won after being inspired by a note from the team’s masseur in the seconds before the race.
“In the old book it says: ‘He that honours me, I will honour.’ Wishing you the best of success always,” read the message.
Liddell’s faith meant that his competitive athletics career was short. He moved to China in 1925 to work as a missionary in impoverished communities. He then married Florence in 1934, with whom he had three girls, but the young family were forced to move to Canada in 1941 for their own safety following the Japanese invasion of China. Liddell stayed on, although Patricia can still treasure the memory of a trip they shared to Scotland the previous summer when she was only five.
“People say, ‘You were so young, how can you remember’, but so much was quite surprising and memorable,” she says, some 84 years later.
“We stayed with my grandmother in Edinburgh and then went to Carcant [in the Scottish Borders]. Wonderful. Rabbits everywhere, sheep, a little creek we would swim on. I had a birthday party – and we had my mother and father together.”
With Florence expecting their third child, Liddell had always planned to follow the family to Canada, where Patricia still lives. “He said, ‘Go to Toronto, have the baby and wait for me’. But then Pearl Harbour [in December 1941], and the world changed.”
Liddell’s missionary station was taken over by the Japanese and he was interned at the Weihsien Internment Camp where, by every account, he continued to selflessly help others before his death following a brain tumour in February 1945. The war would end in China just months later.
“It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known,” said Langdon Gilkey, who survived the camp.
Patricia says that their mother “kept him very alive to us all those years” and that it was a colossal shock when they were informed of her father’s death.
“She [Florence] had been told that he may walk through the door any minute,” says Patricia. “I thought they had made a mistake. Years later I met some of the children in that camp, and heard about the difference he made for them. We were safe in Canada … maybe that was where he was supposed to be.”
And what does Patricia now hope that people take from the story? “Somebody who stands by their principles even under great pressure,” she says. “The press were, ‘How can you do this? [Not run in the 100m]. You are letting your country down’. But you stand by what is important to you. He was not stiff – he didn’t wear his religion on his hip – he was a very modest family man. 
“He loved sport but it wasn’t his be-all and end-all. My mother told me that, when they were in China, another runner said, ‘You could still win an Olympics’. But he said, ‘I have other things that are more important now’.”
Patricia is particularly pleased by how her father’s values live on through the Eric Liddell Community charity in Scotland. The Chariots of Fire film, she says, was also life-changing.
“I came home from work one day and my mother said, ‘Patricia, I had a phone call and they are going to make a film about your father’. She was concerned. What will they do with a man who would not run on a Sunday? Film-makers can change things around. But David Puttnam was extremely good – kept in contact, spoke with her, sent the script.
“They had a special showing at a film festival in Toronto. We sat in the balcony. And he [Puttnam] said, ‘We looked for their families and we found them’. We stood up and everybody clapped. I thought, ‘One could get a big head’. I didn’t deserve it but it’s a lovely legacy.”
Liddell’s Olympic medals are now on public display at the University of Edinburgh reception and, on one of her visits, Patricia was amused to be asked to wear white gloves while handling them. “I thought, ‘white gloves!’ We played with these things as children – but it is nice to know they are looking after them so well.”
Sue Caton, Eric’s niece and one of the patrons of the charity, says that she was particularly drawn to her uncle’s “gallantry” and sense of fair play in helping others, even if they were direct competitors. “I hope young athletes can take something from that,” she says.
It is interesting, then, to hear Puttnam pick up on that theme but also stress the importance of Liddell’s gold medal.
“It was an era when professionalism was taking over and of nice guys coming last,” he says. “So I was looking for someone doing something extraordinarily principled and winning. The film reassured people that you could do the right thing and win. Would I have dreamt of doing the film if he got a silver medal? No.
“I do feel very proud, very connected to the story still. It changed my life, and its success allowed me to get films like Cal, The Killing Fields and The Mission off the ground.”
The very same Stade Yves-du-Manoir de Colombes in which those British chariots shone so brightly still stands in Paris and will actually host the hockey at this summer’s Games. As they prepare to compete, the generation of Paris 2024 will also pass a plaque on which there are eight lines of words. The translation reads: “This plaque is in honour of Eric Liddell, the ‘Flying Scotsman’. A sporting and human example which remains a symbol of friendship between France, Scotland and the United Kingdom. A legend. A heritage. A source of inspiration.”