The 2024 Olympic Games will be held from 24 July to 11 August in Paris, France. Paris’s third turn hosting the Games marks a few significant milestones.
First, this year’s Games have been heralded as a landmark in Olympic history for female athletes. Women first participated in the Games when Paris first hosted in 1900. A grand total of 22 women competed that year. This is the first year in which there will be parity in the number of male and female athletes. The 329 medal events will be divided virtually down the middle, with 157 men’s events and 152 women’s events. The remaining twenty medals will be for mixed-gender events.
Second, 2024 will mark the centenary of Paris’s last Olympics hosting opportunity. Paris was the first city to host the event twice and will become the second, after London, to host it three times.
Third, the 2024 Paris event marks a milestone of particular interest to Christians. On 11 July 1924—one hundred years ago—Eric Liddell broke the Olympic and world records in the 400m race. Liddell, a devout Christian, famously withdrew from his favoured event that year (the 100m sprint) when, several months prior to the Games, he learned that the heats were to be held on a Sunday. A serious contender for sprinting gold, but having previously recorded only modest times in the 440-yard (402m) event, his decision proved to be largely unpopular. Only his coach and family publicly supported him. Despite the criticism, he threw himself fully into training for the longer event.
On the morning of the race, a team masseur handed him a note of encouragement with words from 1 Samuel 2:30 written on it: “Those who honour me I will honour.” Liddell was boosted to realise that support for his decision was broader than he initially thought.
In the race, he drew the outside lane, which meant that his view of his competitors was obscured. With little option but to treat the event as a sprint, he raced to victory in 47.6 seconds, which remained an Olympic record for twelve years until the 1936 Berlin Games. Because he had been born to missionary parents in China, he was also heralded by certain Chinese outlets as that country’s first Olympic gold medalist.
Liddell would not compete in another Olympic event. In another broadly unpopular decision, he travelled to China the following year as a missionary. When tensions rose between Japan and China, he sent his pregnant wife and two young daughters to family in Canada but remained in China to minister to people in need. He would eventually be interned in a Japanese concentration camp, where he would ultimately die five months before liberation. A fellow internee described Liddell as “the finest Christian gentleman it has been my pleasure to meet,” while another wrote, “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.”
According to a fellow missionary, Liddell’s final words were, “It’s complete surrender.” One source suggests that he died as he was struggling to utter the word “surrender” to a student who had come to visit him in the camp hospital. He understood the value of surrender. Once asked whether he regretted his decision to quit competitive athletics for missionary work, he replied, “It’s natural for a chap to think over all that sometimes, but I’m glad I’m at the work I’m engaged in now. A fellow’s life counts for far more at this than the other.” As he gave up medals for missions, he modelled the truth of which Peter wrote: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6–7).
Gold is the most precious prize for Olympic athletes. An Olympic gold medal weighs 500g. In total, more than 800kg in gold will be distributed this year to winning athletes over two weeks in Paris. An Olympic medal is the pinnacle of athletic achievement. Eric Liddell was a part of that achievement, but his genuine faith, tested by fire, was even more precious than gold. He knew the value of obedient sacrifice and it was more than theory to him. He once wrote, “Obedience to God’s will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to do God’s will that brings certainty.” In this, he echoed the words of Jesus, who once said, “If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own” (John 7:17, CSB).
Obeying God’s call to the mission field cost Eric Liddell further Olympic glory. Obeying God’s call to remain in the field cost him his family and, ultimately, his life. But, as he himself said, gospel work counted for more than Olympic gold. He counted Christ to be worthy of everything it cost him. “Many of us are missing something in life,” he said, “because we are after second best. I put before you what I have found to be the best—one who is worthy of all our devotion—Jesus Christ. He is the Saviour for the young and the old. Lord, here I am.”
Most reading this will never be in a position to seriously compete for gold, but we do well to remember that there is something we can all do that is far more precious than gold: We can live lives of genuine faith and full devotion to Jesus Christ, even in trial, which will be found to result in praise and glory and honour to God. Let’s not settle for second best but fully pursue the one who is worthy of all our devotion—Jesus Christ.