If you’ve been reading the papers, watching the telly or wasting your day away on the web recently, you will have probably noticed that the 2008 Olympic Games are drawing ever nearer.  Journalists and politicians, architects and engineers, even movie directors have managed to find themselves embroiled in the build-up to the forthcoming event in August.  (If you weren’t aware they were coming, you need to stop watching re-runs of Friends on Sky and YouTube and find out what’s happening in the world.) 

Without doubt, the Beijing Olympics are on course to becoming the most spectacular celebration of sport the world has ever seen.  The hype is building relentlessly.  Committees from over 150 countries have started selecting their best athletes, the exceptional Chinese stadia are getting their final lick of paint, and the last few overpriced flights to Beijing are being snapped up.  It will, literally, be the biggest, most widely-watched Olympics of all time.

But the anticipation of Beijing is only a small fraction of the Olympic story, a chapter yet to be written in an epic that stretches back over 100 years.  The future may have you tingling with excitement, but it is in the tales from the Olympiads of yesterday where the true legacy of the Games can be found, and where the legends have etched there name into the track, the sand and the medals.
 
To celebrate the history of the greatest event on earth, and to get your juices flowing in preparation for Beijing, for the next five months In The Winning Zone will be taking a nostalgic look back at the greatest Olympic performers that Scotland has ever produced in our new feature, Scottish Olympic Legends.  Starting this month and running through to July, we will be giving you the definitive countdown of the athletes who have achieved more than any other in the pursuit of Olympic excellence.

And when we say Scotland’s greatest Olympians, we really mean greatest.  We’ve been fussy about this.  Our criteria were simple, but stern, and only eight individuals made it onto the list.  Scotland has produced thousands of fine competitors, and hundreds of medallists in the Olympics since its inception in 1900.   In almost every sport imaginable, from archery to athletics, swimming to shooting, Scotland has, at one point or another, been the homeland of great, winning Olympians.

But we just wanted to profile the very best of the best – undoubted ‘legends’.  We looked for evidence of two true traits of greatness – winning and consistency.  To be considered a great Olympian, it isn’t enough just to have been there.  It isn’t even enough to have made a final. 

Nope, to be a great, to be a legend, a medal is a minimum requirement.  As far as the Olympics are concerned, the medal around the neck is what makes the winners stand out.  And then to go back and do again, twice, or maybe three times, proves that these individuals aren’t just one-off winners, they are consistent winners.

Ultimately, the fairest way to judge such a contest is by counting the medals; golds, then silvers, then bronzes.  And rumbling in at joint fifth place is a tie between the 1920s sprinter Eric Liddell, and Scotland’s most famous amateur boxer, Dick McTaggart, both winners of one gold and one bronze medal each.

=5. Dick McTaggart: Lightweight Boxing: Gold – Melbourne 1956; Bronze – Rome 1960

Richard McTaggart MBE – or ‘Dandy Dick’ as he was otherwise known in his fighting days – came from a family that had boxing in the blood.  He had two brothers who were champions in the Army and the Navy, and it was through the RAF that Dick himself first came to prominence in the boxing world.

And when the Dundonian made it to the top, there he stayed for almost ten years, setting several records along the way.  He won his first Olympic medal, a gold, at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, and to this very day remains the only Scot to have won gold in the event.  Plus, not only did he win, but his dazzling footwork and movement, not to mention his dashing white boots, earned him the Val Barker Trophy – ensuring he returned from Australia not only a winner, but as officially the most stylish boxer of the Games.

Dick’s success didn’t go un-noticed back in Scotland.  Well, at least not by the public, though some debate remains as to why he was never officially recognised by his home city of Dundee at the time.  As he stepped off the train and into his Morris Minor car, the city’s boxer tied ropes to it and pulled him the whole way to his doorstep on the Dens Road, where he was reunited with his family.

He wasn’t done breaking records in Melbourne though.  In Rome in 1960 McTaggart collected another medal, bronze this time, and then in 1964 (Tokyo) he fought his way to the quarter final stages, losing to eventual winner, Poland’s Kazimierz Pazdzior.  By appearing in the Japan Games he became the first British boxer to fight in three Olympiads.

Dandy Dick McTaggart, still going strong today in his mid 70s, was inducted in Boxing International Hall of Fame in 2000, and the Scottish Sport Hall of Fame in 2002.  And with an incredible amateur boxing record of 610 wins from 634 fights, including his two Olympic medals and 52 year-old national record yet to be broken, he is without doubt a Scottish Olympic Legend.
 
=5. Eric Liddell: Athletics: Gold – Paris 1924 (400m); Bronze – Paris 1924 (200m)

Eric Liddell – ‘The Flying Scotsman’ – won both of his medals at the 1924 Games, held in Paris.  And though he died young – he was just 43 years old when he succumbed to a brain tumour in 1945 – he is still remembered fondly and widely today, partly because of the legacy he left in athletics and in Scottish Christian culture, and partly because of his portrayal in the Oscar winning film, Chariots of Fire.

He was, by trade if not by definition, a 100 and 220 yard runner first and foremost.  He won regularly at triangular meets between Ireland, Scotland and England over these distances.  Indeed, even in his teens he was being dubbed by the press as a potential Olympian, perhaps even a medal winner.  He even played a few matches on the wing for the Scotland rugby team, winning his first cap at just 20 years-old.

Running the 100 yards in a British record time of 9.7 seconds in early 1924 (not to be beaten for 35 years) at the AAA Championships, Liddell should have entered the Paris Olympics as the hot favourite for the event.  However, famously, it wasn’t to be.  When the itinerary was published some months before the Games, he saw that the heats for the 100m final were to be held on a Sunday, and, being a committed Christian first and foremost, Liddell refused to race, upholding his Christian ethic that the Sabbath was to be a day of rest.

However his decision not to run in the 100m was met with varying degrees of enthusiasm amongst his peers, and he was criticised for giving up a golden opportunity to compete in such a prized event.  But Liddell stood firm, and instead starting training to run in the 400m – not his specialist distance, but one in which he excelled nonetheless. 
Harold Abrahams, his British team-mate and rival, went on to win the 100m.  But, unperturbed, Liddell went to Paris with the opinion that he could win the 400m – an opinion that was definitely in the minority of the public domain at the time.  But to draw a comparison, no-one would expect Donavan Bailey to have defeated Michael Johnson over 400m in 1996, nor Tyson Gay to upset Jeremy Wariner if they were to race over 400m this year.

Liddell got off to a good start at the games by finishing third in the 200m final, behind his great American rivals, Jackson Schulz and Charles Paddock.  And, as if he needed any more inspiration, just before the 400m was about to start, and after he had shaken every one of his opponents’ hands, an American masseur slipped a piece of paper into his hand.  On it was written a verse from 1st Samuel: “Those who honour me, I will honour.”  At least one other person on earth had faith in him.

Liddell won the race emphatically, and in doing so broke the world record, with a time of 47.6 seconds to take the gold medal for Scotland.  It remains one of the most outstanding and moving moments in the history of sport.

In February 2008, Scottish minister John Keddie published the book, ‘Running the Race,’ which depicts Liddell’s story as he prepares to take on the best in the world in an event that he was unaccustomed to, certainly compared to his opponents.

In it, Keddie says: “This was an event he had very little experience in. But in Paris he devastated the field, dominated the race. It was magnified by the fact he was in the outside lane. It was a boy's own tale that was real.”

Liddell’s story is truly legendary.  Some draw inspiration from his commitment to his faith, others from the pure effort and determination he summoned to devastate a field of runners vastly more experienced in that specific event than he was.  Either way, Eric Liddell is truly one of Scotland’s greatest Olympians.

In many ways Liddell was an early prototype of the kind of athlete young people aspire to be, and are advised to be, today.  He wasn’t just a high performance sportsman; he was a high performance person, committing every day of his life to excellence and achievement.  His legacy was typified in 1980 when, after his victory in the 100m at the Moscow Olympics, Allan Wells was asked if he had run the race in honour of 1924 100m champion Harold Abrahams, the last Brit to win the event.  Wells replied, “No, this one was for Eric Liddell”.

RO
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