As sports days go, it was among the more unusual and least publicised, even though it was the final athletics contest in the career of an iconic Olympic champion.

There was a cheering captive audience, but it was far removed from Colombes where Eric Liddell had won Olympic 400 metres gold in Paris in 1924. The scene was a Japanese internment camp during World War II, in China, and Liddell was by then in his early 40s. He had sent his pregnant wife and two children to safety in Canada, and was never to see them again. He died in 1945. An autopsy revealed an inoperable brain tumour.

Eric wrote a letter to his wife hours before he...