Two British runners at the 1924 Olympics: one running to answer the prejudice around him, one refusing to run at all. Both men were real — and the film moved the facts.
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Work through the four short activities. Each word sits in a situation that gives its meaning away — you don't need to know the film yet. Say your answer out loud first, then reveal.
Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981) — winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with a synthesiser score by Vangelis that everybody on earth can hum. Read each part, try the quick check from memory, then discuss. (There are spoilers ahead — that's the point; we're here to talk about it.)
England, 1919. Harold Abrahams arrives at Cambridge, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who made money in England and wanted his sons to belong there. Harold is clever, sharp-tongued and quietly furious. He senses the prejudice in the porters' politeness and the dons' smiles, and he has decided how to answer it: he will run faster than anybody in England. Within days he attempts the college's famous courtyard dash — a run around the great quadrangle finished before the clock stops striking twelve — and he does it, cheered by half the university.
Four hundred miles north, Eric Liddell has a different reason. Born in China to Scottish missionary parents, already an international rugby player, he is astonishingly quick over short distances and completely without vanity about it. He intends to return to China as a missionary, and his sister fears that athletics is stealing him from that. Eric's answer is that his speed is a gift, and that using it fully is itself a form of thanks — that God made him fast, and that when he runs he feels it.
Then the two men meet on a track in Scotland. Liddell, knocked off balance early in the race, recovers and runs Abrahams down. Abrahams has never been beaten before, and he takes the defeat badly — a wound he cannot argue away.
1. Why does Harold Abrahams run, and what does he do in the college courtyard?
2. What is Eric Liddell's reason for running, and who worries about it?
1. He runs to answer the antisemitism he feels around him at Cambridge — to prove he belongs by being the fastest man in England. He completes the courtyard dash before the clock finishes striking twelve.
2. He believes his speed is a gift and that running fully is a way of honouring it; his sister fears athletics is pulling him away from missionary work in China.
Stung by defeat, Abrahams hires Sam Mussabini, a professional coach with a reputation for taking sprinters apart and rebuilding them. In an age that worshipped the gentleman amateur, paying a professional is close to scandal, and Abrahams is summoned by two college masters who tell him, in the most courteous language imaginable, that he is going about it the wrong way — that a gentleman runs for the love of it, not with hired help. He hears the older prejudice underneath the polite words, and he refuses to back down.
Both men are selected for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Then the blow falls. Liddell learns that the heats of the 100 metres — his event, the one everyone expects him to win — are scheduled for a Sunday. He will not run on a Sunday. It is not a tactic or a gesture; it is simply not something he is prepared to do. Officials, selectors and finally the Prince of Wales himself work on him: the country needs this, they say; a man can serve God and still serve his nation. Liddell, unassuming and immovable, declines.
The deadlock breaks when Lord Andrew Lindsay, an aristocratic hurdler who has already won a medal, offers Liddell his own place in the 400 metres — an event held on a weekday, and much longer than anything Liddell has trained for.
1. Why is Abrahams criticised for hiring Sam Mussabini?
2. What is Liddell's problem in Paris, and how is it solved in the film?
1. Mussabini is a paid professional, and the amateur code of the time held that a gentleman should train himself for love of the sport. Two college masters tell him so — and he hears prejudice beneath the manners.
2. The 100 metres heats fall on a Sunday and he refuses to run; a team-mate, Lord Andrew Lindsay, gives up his place in the 400 metres so that Liddell can race on a weekday.
On the Sunday of the heats, Liddell is not at the stadium; he is in a pulpit in Paris, preaching. Abrahams, meanwhile, walks out for the 100 metres final in a silence that the film stretches almost unbearably, and wins — the first British man to take that title. The extraordinary thing is what follows. There is no explosion of joy. He sits alone in the changing room, hollowed out, while Mussabini, barred from the stadium as a professional, weeps in his hotel room and punches a hole in his hat. The thing Abrahams thought would settle the argument has not settled anything.
Days later, Liddell runs the 400 metres — not his distance, from the outside lane, with a slip of paper in his hand from a team-mate reminding him of a line about honour. He goes off at a suicidal pace, does not fade, and wins by a distance, with the crowd on its feet. It is one of the great gambles in Olympic history and it comes off completely.
The two men come home as national heroes. The film closes where it began, at Abrahams' memorial service in 1978, with a choir singing the hymn that gave the film its title. Text on the screen tells us what happened to the other man: Eric Liddell went to China as a missionary and died there in 1945, in a camp, while the country was under Japanese occupation. All Scotland, the film says, mourned him.
1. How does Abrahams react to winning the 100 metres, and where is Mussabini?
2. What happens in Liddell's 400 metres, and what does the film tell us about the rest of his life?
1. He wins but feels empty rather than triumphant, sitting alone afterwards. Mussabini, excluded from the stadium because he is a professional coach, is celebrating alone in his hotel room.
2. He runs from the outside lane, sets off far too fast, holds on and wins comfortably. Afterwards he becomes a missionary in China and dies there in 1945 during the Japanese occupation.
English lets you delete the joining words in a relative clause and leave only a participle. "The runner who was chosen for the team" becomes "the runner chosen for the team". Nothing is lost, and the sentence gets faster and more literary. It is the single easiest way to make written English sound like a grown-up wrote it — and this film's world of committees, timetables and decisions is full of it.
Each sentence has already lost its who/which/that. Supply the participle the meaning needs.
1. The heats (schedule) for a Sunday morning were the reason he changed race.
2. A student (arrive) at university with something to prove will train harder than anybody.
3. A record (break) in front of forty thousand people is not easily forgotten.
4. The runners (wait) in their lanes could hear the whole stadium go quiet.
1. scheduled (passive — someone scheduled them)
2. arriving (active — the student arrives)
3. broken (passive — someone breaks the record)
4. waiting (active — the runners wait)
Look at the clause in italics. Write the reduced version, or write no if this clause cannot be reduced at all.
1. The photographers who stand at the finish line see everything. → the photographers at the finish line
2. The runner whose sister begged him to stop went to Paris anyway. →
3. The official who will fire the starting pistol is already in position. →
4. The note which a friend pressed into his hand was still there at the end. →
1. standing (subject pronoun + an active verb → -ing)
2. no — whose can never be reduced; the clause stays exactly as it is.
3. no — the clause carries a future/modal (will), and a participle would throw that meaning away.
4. no — which is the object here (a friend is the subject). You may only drop the pronoun: "the note a friend pressed into his hand".
A timetable (publish) in the autumn of 1923 gave him eight months to think. A sprinter (train) for the shortest race of all now had to learn the longest one instead. And the medal (win) on that Friday in Paris was, he always insisted, never really his alone.
published · training · won
Notice the pattern: if the noun does the action, use -ing; if the action is done to the noun, use the past participle.
Carry this into the Speak tab. "A man driven by conviction", "a race won by a stride", "the athlete chosen for the team" — three words instead of six, and it sounds like the film's own voice.
Almost all of it, and then not quite. Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell were real men who really won those two gold medals in Paris in 1924. But the film's most dramatic single moment — the one everybody remembers — did not happen, and several other scenes are careful inventions. Here is where the line falls.
The Games of the VIII Olympiad opened in Paris on 5 July 1924 — 44 nations, roughly three thousand athletes, the first Games with a purpose-built Olympic village, and the first at which the motto Citius, Altius, Fortius was used. Most athletics events were held at the Colombes stadium. Harold Abrahams won the 100 metres on Monday 7 July in 10.6 seconds, equalling the Olympic record and becoming the first British man to take the title; he also took a relay silver. Eric Liddell won the 400 metres on Friday 11 July in 47.6 seconds, and took bronze in the 200 metres on 9 July. All of that is exactly as the film says.
In the film, Liddell discovers the Sunday timetable as he boards the boat to France — a bolt from nowhere, days before the race. In reality the Olympic timetable had been published months in advance; Liddell knew in the autumn of 1923 that the 100 metres heats fell on a Sunday, roughly eight months before the Games. The heats really were held on Sunday 6 July 1924, and he really did decline to run them; on that Sunday he preached at the Scots Kirk in Paris instead. But he had all winter and spring to prepare, and he used it: he switched his training to the 400 metres, a distance he had barely raced, and he came to Paris ready for it.
That changes the meaning of the story rather than the facts of it. The film gives us an impulsive act of faith under unbearable pressure. What actually happened was slower, and arguably harder: a decision taken calmly in advance and then defended for eight months against selectors, journalists and a great deal of national impatience. He drew the outside lane in the final, went out at a reckless pace, and never came back to the field. The time, 47.6 seconds, was ratified as a world record at the time — though World Athletics rescinded it in 1928, because the mark it beat had been set over 440 yards rather than 400 metres. It stood in any case as an Olympic record and as one of the great front-running performances of the century.
The prejudice Abrahams faced was real. As a schoolboy he was turned away from lodgings and kept from reading the lesson at school assemblies because he was Jewish. Sam Mussabini was real too — Scipio Africanus Mussabini, born in London to a family of Syrian, Italian and French descent, a professional in a world that pretended coaching did not exist. His athletes took eleven Olympic medals across five Games, and because he took money he was never officially recognised. Abrahams really was accused of something close to cheating for employing him.
But the scene everyone quotes — Abrahams summoned before two college masters and facing them down — is invented. There is no record of any such meeting. It is a piece of dramatic compression: real prejudice and a real amateurism row, folded into one confrontation that never took place. The film also reverses his races. He won the 100 metres first, and only afterwards finished sixth and last in the 200 metres final — which the film turns around so that defeat comes before triumph.
The Trinity College Great Court Run — 339 metres round the quadrangle before the clock finishes striking twelve — is real, and gloriously difficult. Abrahams never attempted it. The first person on record to complete it was Lord Burghley, in 1927, four years after Abrahams had left Cambridge. And the scene was not even filmed there: Cambridge refused permission, reportedly uneasy about the depiction of antisemitism, so the run was shot in the courtyard at Eton College.
Lord Andrew Lindsay, the charming aristocrat who hands Liddell his place, is a fictional stand-in for David Cecil, Lord Burghley, who declined to be involved in the film and would not let his name be used. The two men were not even contemporaries — Abrahams was at Cambridge from 1919 to 1923, Burghley from 1923 to 1927 — and Burghley's hurdles gold came in 1928, not 1924. Even the famous champagne glasses balanced on the hurdles came from somewhere else: the hurdler Don Finlay used to train with matchboxes, and the screenwriter promoted them.
The last card on the screen is true, and understated. Liddell returned to China in 1925 with the London Missionary Society, taught at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tianjin, was ordained in 1932, married Florence Mackenzie in 1934 and had three daughters. In 1941 he sent his family to Canada for safety and went on working. In 1943 the Japanese occupation authorities interned him at Weihsien camp in Shandong, where fellow prisoners remembered him teaching the children and looking after the elderly. He died there on 21 February 1945, of an undiagnosed brain tumour, five months before the camp was liberated. He was 43.
This is the heart of the lesson — do it all out loud. The timer keeps you going; fill the time with detail.
Tell the story of Chariots of Fire in your own words, as if to somebody who has never seen it. Move through the arc: Abrahams arriving at Cambridge with something to prove → Liddell running for a different reason entirely → the defeat and the hiring of Mussabini → the Sunday heats and the refusal → the swap into the 400 metres → the two golds, and what each man felt afterwards.
Work in at least five key words (conviction, snub, gruelling, ordeal, relinquish, vindicate, forfeit, unassuming, uphold, bow to pressure), and use reduced relative clauses throughout: "a coach barred from the stadium", "the heats scheduled for a Sunday", "an athlete trained for the wrong distance".
Liddell forfeits his best event on a point of conscience, with a nation, a committee and a prince all leaning on him. Build an argument: was he right, or was he indulging a private principle at his team's and his country's expense? Then argue the other side. Bring in modern parallels you know — athletes who boycott, doctors or soldiers who refuse an order, employees who will not sign something.
Abrahams gets exactly what he trained for and feels empty. Is competitive success worth what it costs? Make your case.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: