The Olympics are over and superlatives exhausted but one small piece jumped out at me today in the Herald
Written by Doug Gillon a man who also knows his rugby and who has covered every Games since Munich it just reminds us all about the meaning of sport
So as Hawks embark on another season with a young team and a new challenge it is worth considering the words of a great sportsman who made his rugby breakthrough at New Anniesland in the Jubilee Inter City Match of 1922
John Keddie the author of Running the Race played for Boroughmuir



Chinese press on Liddell . . .
Published on 13 August 2012

Doug Gillon

CHINA DAILY is not on my regular reading list.

A German colleague passed it to me. And there it was. Two thirds of a page on Eric Liddell, headed: "Olympians are forever."

Yu Wenji is 86, and half blind, but when he heard the Chariots of Fire theme music from the film about the 1924 victories by Liddell (400m) and Harold Abrahams (100m), playing from the 2012 Olympics on TV, he almost burst into tears.

He lives in Tianjin, where the Scot died in 1945 shortly before the end of the war, having suffered a brain tumour in a Japanese internment camp.

Yu is working on a biography of Liddell, to be published in Mandarin this year on the 110TH anniversary of the missionary's birth.

He was Liddell's ball boy when he was playing tennis. Liddell befriended him, encouraging him at school. "He told me people were born on the same starting line, but the results were different, so people needed talent and huge expectations for the future, so as not to let down the healthy body given by God," Yu said.

Liddell gave him English text books, taught him English, and encouraged him to study.

Yu proved an excellent student, but after Liddell was interned, he never saw him again. He did meet people interned with the Scot, however, and was inspired by what they told him off his final years.

He gained degrees in engineering and finance, but despite his linguistic skills, was a victim of the Cultural Revolution – forced to work as a post office clerk.

In 1999, Yu suffered a brain tumour, like Liddell, but was operated on. He was baptised, to mark his rebirth.

Nothing gets into China Daily without regime approval. Yu says the point of his story is to show that Liddell is an example of someone who can erase misunderstanding between China and the West.

John Keddie, the Scottish minister has written books on Liddell (Running The Race, and Finish The Race) and has updated them for these Games.

This article was originally posted on 13-Aug-2012, 07:08 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 13-Aug-2012, 07:28.