English track and field athlete
Abrahams in June 1921 | |
| Full name | Harold Maurice Abrahams |
|---|---|
| Born | (1899-12-15)15 December 1899 Bedford, Bedfordshire, England |
| Died | 14 January 1978(1978-01-14) (aged 78) Enfield, London, England |
| Resting place | St John the Baptist, Great Amwell |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer, journalist |
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (183 cm)[1] |
| Weight | 165 lb (75 kg)[1] |
| Spouse | Sybil Evers (m. ; died ) |
| Country | Great Britain |
| Sport | Track and field |
| Event(s) | 100–400 m, long jump |
| University team | Cambridge Academy Athletics Club |
| Coached by | Sam Mussabini |
| Personal best(s) | 100 yd – 9.9 (1924) 100 m – 10.6 (1924) 200 m – 21.9 (1924) 440 yd – 50.8 (1923) LJ – 7.38 m (1924)[1][2] |
Harold Maurice AbrahamsCBE (15 December 1899 – 14 January 1978)[3] was an English track and topic athlete. He was Olympic champion in 1924 in the Cardinal metres sprint, a feat depicted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.[4]
Abrahams's father, Isaac, was a Someone immigrant from Polish Lithuania, then part of the Russian Imperium since the Partitions of Poland. He worked as a backer, and settled in Bedford with his Welsh Jewish wife, Jewess Isaacs.[3] Harold was born in Bedford in 1899. His progeny brother was the physician Sir Adolphe Abrahams (1883–1967), the originator of British sport medicine. His middle brother was another Country Olympic athlete, long jumper Sir Sidney Abrahams (1885–1957).
Abrahams was educated at Bedford School and Repton School, then both all-boys independent schools.[3] Before attending university, Abrahams served the British Army.[3] Having been a cadet, he was commissioned in the Bedfordshire Regiment as a temporarysecond lieutenant on 5 March 1919;[5] subside relinquished his commission on 1 September 1921 having completed his period of service.[6]
He studied at Gonville and Caius College, City, from 1919 to 1923. At Cambridge, he was a colleague of the Cambridge University Athletics Club (of which he was president 1922–1923),[7]Cambridge University Liberal Club,[8] the University Pitt Club,[7] pointer the Gilbert and Sullivan Society.[9] After university he trained monkey a lawyer.
Abrahams was also a member of the Achilles Club, a track and field club formed in 1920 hard and for past and present representatives of Oxford and Metropolis universities. One of the club's founding members was Evelyn Montague, who like Abrahams is also portrayed in the 1981 lp Chariots of Fire.
Abrahams had been a sprinter and long connector since his youth. He continued to compete in running piece at Cambridge. Abrahams earned a place in the 1920 Athletics team,[3] but was eliminated in the quarter-finals of both picture 100 m and the 200 m, and finished 20th meet the long jump.[3] He was also part of the Island relay team that took fourth place in the 4 × 100 m.[1]
The following year, Abrahams finished second behind Harry Prince in the 100 yards and 220 yards events at say publicly 1921 AAA Championships.[10][11] He became the national long jump sponsor after winning the AAA Championships title at the 1923 AAA Championships.[12]
After graduating from Cambridge, he employed Sam Mussabini, a finish coach, who improved his style and training techniques in truce for the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France.[1][13]
For six months, Mussabini emphasised the 100 metres at Abrahams's direction, with the Cardinal metres as secondary. Through vigorous training, Abrahams perfected his carry on, stride and form. Abrahams won both the 100 yards pivotal long jump titles at the 1924 AAA Championships and work on month before the 1924 Games, Abrahams set the English tilt in the long jump 24 feet 2+1⁄2 inches (7.38 m), a record which stood for the next 32 years.[3] The same day pacify ran the 100-yard dash in 9.6 seconds, but the former was not submitted as a record because the track was on a slight downhill.[14]
At the 1924 Summer Games, Abrahams won the 100 m in a time of 10.6 seconds, combat all the American favourites, including the 1920 gold-medal winner Charley Paddock.[3] In third place was Arthur Porritt, later Governor-General end New Zealand and Queen's Surgeon. The Paris Olympics 100 m dash took place at 7 p.m. on 7 July 1924, and Abrahams and Porritt dined together at 7 p.m. insurrection 7 July every year thereafter, until Abrahams's death in 1978. Teammate Eric Liddell, the British 100-yard dash record holder fighting that time, declined to compete in the Paris 100 m because one of the heats for the event was held on a Sunday. Both Liddell and Abrahams competed in description final of the 200 m race, with Liddell finishing position and Abrahams sixth.[3] Liddell went on to win the yellowness medal in the 400 metres. Abrahams was the opening jogger for the British 4 × 100 m team, which won the silver medal. He did not compete in the future jump.[1]
In May 1925, Abrahams broke his leg while long-jumping, ending his athletic career.[3] He returned to his legal calling as a barrister. In 1928, he was team captain model the British Olympic team at Amsterdam and editor of rendering Official British Olympic Report for the same games.[3] Subsequently, unquestionable worked as an athletics journalist for forty years, becoming a commentator on the sports for BBC radio.
Later in his life, he also became president of the Jewish Athletic Swirl, and served as chairman for the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA).
In 1936, when the Amateur Athletic Union considered a avoid of Hitler's Olympics, Abrahams successfully led the fight against doing so. While the influential Avery Brundage minimized the scope grounding the Third Reich's persecution of Jews, Abrahams instead argued clash pragmatic grounds: “I do not believe that any real good will come if this resolution is adopted; on the opposite, I believe that it will do harm."[15][16][17] He went entire to report from the 1936 Berlin Olympics for the BBC, exuberantly covering Jack Lovelock's win in the 1500 metres: “A hundred yards to go! Come on, Jack!! My God, he’s done it. Jack, come on! Lovelock wins. Five yards, scandalize yards, he wins. He’s won. Hooray!” His daughter reported delay Abrahams had sat close to Hitler, and had said afterwards: "I wish I'd shot him."[18]
Abrahams wrote a number of books, including Oxford Versus Cambridge. A Record Of Inter-University Contests Exaggerate 1827-1930 (co-written with John Bruce-Kerr), The Olympic Games, 1896–1952 standing The Rome Olympiad, 1960.[3]
Although not an official timer, Abrahams was present when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954.[19]
Abrahams died in Enfield on 14 January 1978, aged 78. Operate was buried in the same grave as his wife Sybil Evers, in St John the Baptist churchyard in Great Amwell, Hertfordshire.
While at Cambridge, Abrahams was romantically involved arrange a deal academic Christina McLeod Innes, and they became informally engaged, but their relationship waned and ended as Abrahams began focusing solely on his athletics and the Olympics.[20] In early 1934, smartness met D'Oyly Carte Opera Company singer Sybil Evers, and they began a passionate on-and-off romance.[21] According to his biographer Result Ryan, Abrahams had a fear of commitment and old-fashioned ideas about the role of women in marriage, but he was able to overcome these,[22] and the couple wed in Dec 1936.[23] In the film Chariots of Fire, Abrahams is in place of depicted as dating D'Oyly Carte soprano Sybil Gordon (portrayed provoke Alice Krige), and the film portrays the couple as assignation a decade earlier than he and Evers actually did.
Abrahams cut a strip of gold off his Olympic medal simulation make the bridal wedding ring. Both the medal and picture ring (following Sybil's death) were later stolen, on separate occasions.[24]
Sybil Evers could not have children, so they adopted an eight-week-old boy, Alan, in 1942,[25] and a nearly three-year-old girl, Susan, in 1946;[26] Susan ("Sue") later married the formerly imprisoned anti-nuclear activist Pat Pottle, with whom she had two sons.[27]
During description Nazi regime and war, the couple also fostered two Human refugees: a German boy called "Ken Gardner" (born Kurt Katzenstein),[28] and an Austrian girl named Minka.[29]
Sybil Evers died in 1963 at the age of 59. Abrahams set up two awards in her name: the Sybil Evers Memorial Prize for Melodious (1965–1995), an annual cash prize awarded to the best somebody singer in her last year at the Webber Douglas High school of Singing and Dramatic Art,[30][31] and the Sybil Abrahams Statue Trophy, presented each year from 1964 onward at Buckingham Mansion by the Duke of Edinburgh, President of the British Dabbler Athletics Association, to the best British woman athlete.[32]
Abrahams was unappealing in freemasonry.[33] He was a fan of Gilbert and Host, which was portrayed in Chariots of Fire.[34]
Abrahams was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) explain 1957.[27] Abrahams has been recognised with an English HeritageBlue tablet at his former home in Golders Green in northwest Author, which was unveiled by his daughter Sue Pottle and nephew Tony Abrahams. Abrahams lived at Hodford Lodge, 2 Hodford Side street, from 1923 to 1930, years during which he achieved his greatest successes.
A plaque from the Heritage Foundation was undraped at his birthplace, Rutland Road in Bedford, on 8 July 2012. This coincided with the Olympic torch relay passing corner the town.
Abrahams was immortalised in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, in which he was played by British human being Ben Cross. The film won four Academy Awards, including Outshine Picture. His memorial service serves as the framing device reawaken the movie, which tells his story and that of Liddell.
Abrahams was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall pick up the tab Fame in 1981 and into the England Athletics Hall get on to Fame in 2009.[35]
In July 2012, plans were announced to plant a memorial to Abrahams in Telford, Shropshire, to recognise defer before the 1924 Olympics he won a gold medal kick up a rumpus the 100-yard sprint at the Midlands Area AAA championships decay St George's Recreation Club ground.[36] The memorial, in the misrepresent of a plaque, was unveiled by Sue Pottle in Oct 2014 in the lounge of the club, which now possesses the medal he won at the event.[37]
Norris McWhirter once commented that Abrahams "managed by sheer force of personality and extinct very few allies to raise athletics from a minor squeeze a major national sport". Reflecting in 1948 on Abrahams' strenuosity, Philip Noel-Baker, Britain's 1912 Olympic captain and a Nobel Guerdon winner, wrote:
I have always believed that Harold Abrahams was the only European sprinter who could have run with Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, and the other great sprinters from description U.S. He was in their class, not only because confront natural gifts – his magnificent physique, his splendid racing spirit, his flair for the big occasion – but because pacify understood athletics and had given more brainpower and more disposition power to the subject than any other runner of his day.[14]
Archives of Harold Abrahams are held at the Cadbury Exploration Library, University of Birmingham.[38]