It was even hotter than usual in Paris during the summer of 1924. Day after sweltering day, the sun rose high into the clear blue sky, while the city baked below. As the Olympic Games unfolded at the Stade Col-ombes, the temperature regularly soared past 100F, which ravaged the fields in the distance events. In the 10,000m cross-country, only 23 of the 38 starters made it to the finish.

The weather was never going to affect the sprinters as badly. They could look forward to perfect conditions for their explosive events. When they arrived at the stadium for the 100m heats on the morning of July 5, they had nothing to fear.

And neither had Eric Liddell. Away from the track, in the cool sanctuary of a Scots kirk in the city, he was at peace with himself and his God as he delivered a sermon. Months earlier, in an act that astonished the British athletics establishment and which, almost 60 years later, became the subject of the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, he had said he would not participate in the 100m as its scheduling would require him to break the Sabbath.

The subject of his sermon that day is unknown. In the film, Liddell is shown reading from the Isaiah. "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall," he says. "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."

AT THE track, a few kilometres away, Harold Abrahams was also relaxed. As the son of a Lithuanian Jew, running on a Sunday was no breach of religious principle for the Cambridge University student who had dominated English sprinting over the previous three years. His best times in the run-up to the Games were still well short of those set by Charles Paddock of the United States, the reigning Olympic champion and world record-holder, but Abrahams had strong confidence in himself.

Sam Mussabini, the professional coach hired by Abrahams, had developed the runner's technique to a fine art. His stride had been shortened and he had lowered his arm action, putting more poise into his running. He had acquired a more powerful start and learnt to concentrate on his dip at

the finish. Liddell's withdrawal had established him as Britain's best hope for gold in the Games's blue-riband event.

Abrahams was a consummate technician. And even if

he lacked Liddell's overt piety, he was no less a driven man. Elimination in the second round of the 100m at the Antwerp Games four years earlier was a failure that had festered inside him. He later confirmed that he was also spurred on by the increase in anti-Semitism in England at the time.

As he sat by the track that day, Abrahams kept a short note from Mussabini in his pocket. Its advice was terse and clinical. "Only think of two things," it said, "the report of the pistol and the tape. When you hear the one, just run like hell until you break the other."

Abrahams followed his coach's advice to the letter. In his heat, he set the fastest qualifying time and, after successfully negotiating his quarter- and semi-finals, he lined up for the final, having replaced Paddock as favourite. Again, he ran like hell, condensing his inner will and indignation into pure speed as he ran the race of his life. He broke the tape in 10.6sec, an Olympic record, to take the gold medal.

LIDDELL watched from the stand as Abrahams triumphed. No Briton had ever won the Olympic 100m, but his religious convictions admitted no pangs of envy into his reaction to Abrahams's victory. Liddell was, arguably, the pre-eminent sprinter of the age, but the evidence of many witnesses denies any suggestion that he felt he'd been deprived of an achievement that was rightfully his.