Nickname: “Flying Scotsman”
Sport: Track & Field
Country: Great Britain
Anyone who has seen the movie Chariots of Fire knows all about Eric Liddell, the devoutly Christian Scot who, at the 1924 Paris Olympics, refused to break the Sabbath by running in a 100-meter heat on a Sunday — blowing his chance for a gold in his best event. He then went on to win gold, anyway, in record-breaking time in the 400 meters. Nicknamed after the famous express train between London and Edinburgh, Liddell will always and forever be associated with Scotland — even if he was born and, at the absurdly young age of 43, died in China (he succumbed to a brain tumor in a Japanese internment camp during WWII) where he’d been a missionary for almost 20 years.