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THE MAKING OF “”

From memory, it was in late 1978 or early 1979 that I first read in the Sunday Times that Colin Welland was scripting a movie on and , gold- medallists in the 1924 . It bore a less than inspiring title, and was called “The Runners”.

Don’t ask me how, but I somehow secured Colin’s address, wrote to him offering my help, and within a week he was sitting opposite me in my living room.

It immediately became clear to me that Colin Welland was a sports nutter. OK, perhaps not quite as nutty as me, not a fanatic who had devoted his life to sport, but a fellow nutter nevertheless. Thus, we immediately got along together like a house on fire, and within a week I was appointed to the role of “script consultant”, at the prodigious sum of £500.

Colin was still in the early stages of his research on the film, which was the product of someone called , at the head of a film- company called Enigma Productions.

The central themes of the film would be the anti-Semitism endured by Abrahams at Cambridge University and Liddell’s refusal, on religious grounds, to compete in the Sunday Final of the .

In the case of Abrahams, I had the advantage of knowing him, as he had in effect been my previous employer, as a National Athletics Coach. Abrahams, who had died a couple of years earlier, had been a member of a privileged Blazerati, a group who believed that they had been given by birth the Divine Right to rule British athletics. He was not therefore an immediately likeable character, and it would not be to be easy for Colin to make him one. And, to my knowledge, Abraham’s being Jewish had not hindered him in reaching the ruling class of British athletics.

Eric Liddell, on the other hand, he had the advantage of being a Scot, he was a man of a totally different complexion. But I pointed out to Colin that he had not refused to compete in the 100 metres, simply because he had not been chosen by his country for that event in the first place. No, as far back as 1923 Liddell had known that the 100 metre final would be on a Sunday, and as a devout Christian, he did not wish to compete on the Lord’s Day. He had instead therefore chosen to go for the two longer sprints, the and the 400 metres.

But I was to learn early in my role as script-consultant that in the area of biographic feature film, writers tend to be free in their attitude to literal truth. All that was 1 going to matter was that the characters of the two men were accurately portrayed, within a plausible plot. And so I kept to myself my concerns about historical accuracy for the moment and let Colin get on with his research

And get on with it he did, but he soon came up against his first problem, difficulties in securing the help of another medallist, , who had achieved gold in the Paris . Colin never made clear to me what problems he was having with Lowe, but my reaction was immediate. And it was that we take him out of the plot.

Because I felt that Lowe, being another gold-medallist, might well take attention away from our two principals, Abrahams and Liddell. Colin should therefore create a lighter, aristocratic contrast to our two principals, and I therefore suggested the fictitious Lord Linsey.

I chose the 400metre hurdles as his event, not because it echoed Lord Burleigh’ s later achievement in Amsterdam in 1928, but because I felt that it might be possible to train an actor in an event with modest technical demands. These were ones which could be made even more modest by taking the hurdle down by six inches. After all, no one in the audience could possibly notice.

We were, by now, into mid-1979, and it was now time to meet Puttnam and the director Hugh Hudson. Hudson, an Old Etonian, seemed to me to have arrived from some distant planet. David Puttnam, on the other hand, was quite different. Deriving from a more modest background, he made no similar display of effortless superiority, having navigated his way through the demanding world of commercial films. I was soon to find Puttnam to be a leader of quite a different calibre from those like Harold Abrahams whom I had encountered in athletics.

We all came together for the first time at a Piccadilly club, and it was at this point that Puttnam asked if I might extend my role and act as a sort of Technical Director. This would mean choosing the actors for the physical roles, training them, then making certain that that the film’s athletics sequences looked real. For, although athletics would occupy less than a tenth of the running-time, it lay at the heart of the film. If, therefore, its portrayal failed to convince, then no one would have much interest in the other two hours.

And so it was back to the script. I had been for weeks boring the pants off Colin with my yarns about the famous New Year Powderhall professional , and he now suggested that we have Liddell run in it. No, I replied, the issue of his amateur status would prevent that. But, I suggested, why not have us introduce Liddell in a

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Highland Games, deep in the heather and the hills? Colin immediately agreed, and inserted a new scene, but more of that later.

So now, now let’s move on to October 1979, and to a sodden cinder athletics track in Putney and thirty one shivering actors, standing before me, awaiting my commands. Alas, there was a significant lack of muscle on display, for those were the days long before Health Clubs and rippling abdominals. It was therefore not perhaps a surprise that several of my prospective Olympians were sick during their warm-up.

“Remember Tom,” said David Puttnam .“We’ll go by your choice. So just give us the ones that you think you can make into athletes.”

Easier said than done, unless I had suddenly acquired the powers of a Gypsy Petulengro. Because it was impossible to predict how an actor’s muscles might respond to training in sprints and hurdles, with hamstrings ever-ready to twang and sensitive Achilles tendons begging to become inflamed. So this was surely going to be a shot in the dark.

Nevertheless, after an hour and a half in the freezing cold, I had chosen two actors and for the main roles and another four for the supporting parts.

David Puttnam smiled.

“Those were exactly the two men that we wanted, Tom,” he said. “I really don’t know how you did it.”

Neither did I.

Thus, in November 1979, with six months to go to the 1924 Olympic Games, I set about training six actors who had never in their lives taken part in athletics, not only to compete, but to convince an audience that they were athletes. And to coach two of them to win Olympic gold medals.

Thus it was that in mid-November 1979 that I began to prepare my motley crew of apprehensive actors for what was soon to become “Chariots of Fire”. I use the word “apprehensive” advisedly, because in discussion, though none expressed any doubt about his capacity as an actor, not one had expressed any confidence in his athletic ability.

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But first, first we still had to find an actor to play my fictitious hurdler, Lord Lindsay. And it was thus that Puttnam and Hudson now brought to the St. Albans track a fine young Scots actor, who shall be nameless, for reasons that you will soon understand.

At first, all went very well, with his running as just as good as that of Ian Charleson, Ben Cross and the others had been back at Putney. True, he had no background in athletics but then neither had any my other future Olympians. But soon the moment of truth eventually arrived when I had to present my Scot with the actual clearance of a hurdle.

I put the barrier down to its lowest point, at about thirty centimeters. But on being confronted with the hurdle, my prospective Olympian suddenly went pale and refused to make any attempt to clear it. This was perhaps not surprising, for it probably represented for him a personal best in high jump. He was immediately placed in the next taxi to Heathrow Airport by David Puttnam, and we all gloomily returned to my house. There, Puttnam confessed to me that he had for some time known that our Scot had been known to be susceptible to the occasional dram. I saw no great purpose in discussing the extent of his alcoholic habits, but we nevertheless still had to find ourselves a Lord Lindsey.

But now another problem arose, a few weeks before I was to set off to the Lake Placid Winter Olympics as coach to our national bobsleigh team. My actors had assembled at my house and we were discussing their training for the two weeks that I would be away.

Then Ian Charleson spoke.

“Tom,” he said. “We have been training for over a month, but so far Enigma, they have paid us absolutely nothing.”

“Oh. So what can I do?”

“Would you ask them to help us out with a few pounds while you are away at the Olympics?”

“Well, I’ll certainly give it a try,” I said. “So how much would you want?”

Ian’s response was immediate.

“Fifty pounds a week.”

I immediately went into my office to call Enigma, to be greeted by an assistant producer, James Crawford. 4

His response was immediate.

“Impossible,” he said “Absolutely impossible. You see, none of them are on contract yet, and if we paid them it would represent an acceptance that they were. So if we suddenly changed our minds about casting, they would have us by the balls.”

Thus I travelled off to Lake Placid, knowing that none of my men would train on Thursday mornings, because they would all be at their Employment Exchanges, receiving their dole. But when I returned from the Olympics, there was a turn for the better, for I suddenly located my Lord Lindsay, in the angular form of .

Fortunately, by this time we had been forced to move indoors, because the manager of the St. Albans track, fearing for the delicate winter surface of his cinder track, had banned me from using it.

Thus, we had moved to a large indoor area, at Haringey, where Nigel was now proving to be an apt pupil. Up to that point, all of our training had been conducted in warm-up shoes, in order to avoid injury. But I had decided that the time was surely ripe to move on to wearing sprint- spikes, and had ordered a pair of Adidas shoes for each of my actors.

That eventful Haringey day in March 1979, we had just completed what had been an excellent session, and I intimated to the squad that their Adidas sprint-spikes had now arrived. There was something close to hysteria when this was announced, because for them this would be the first time that any of them had ever worn spikes.

I then doled out the shoes. But I first sternly warned them that on no account should they now try to run in them, for the session was over, and I turned away to take care of my three-year old daughter Kate. But suddenly there was a scream from just behind me.

It was Naughty Nigel. For not only had he put on his spikes, he had even attempted to hurdle in them. And no, he had not hit the hurdle and fallen, no, Nigel had probably never even reached it, he had simply tripped over his spikes, smashed into the barrier, hit the ground hard and damaged his left wrist.

But he was now clearly in considerable pain, and Ben Cross immediately offered to drive him to the A and E at the nearby Middlesex Hospital. I agreed, and asked him to get back to me on Nigel’s condition later that afternoon. A few hours later, Ben

5 reported back to me that Nigel was now OK, he had simply tweaked his wrist, and would be absolutely fine for the next session, and I phoned Nigel to confirm this.

I heaved a sigh of relief, for he was a lovely guy, and had taken to hurdling really well. But what I was to discover several years later was that Nigel had actually broken his wrist. And that neither of them had probably got within a mile of the Middlesex Hospital, who would have immediately encased Nigel in plaster, putting him out of the 1924 Olympic Games.

No. Naughty Nigel had simply bought himself a thick, wide leather strap and tightly bound it around his left wrist. A few years back, after a BBC interview with him, he showed me that wrist, and it was like something out of a Hammer movie. So please let us hear no more about wimpy actors.

Earlier, at my suggestion, Colin had agreed to add a Highland Games sequence, one in which we could introduce Liddell as a sprinter. But where, now asked David Puttnam, might we film this, and what would it look like? I immediately sketched it out, in my schoolboy scrawl, a drawing, encompassing two mountains, a stream, a farmer’s field, dancing platforms and a couple of tents, a grazing cow, a typical Games scenario.

Puttnam had immediately asked me where he might be able to locate such a Brigadoon fantasy, and I directed him up to the far North, where a lordly member of my Olympic bobsleigh team had assured me that he owned exactly such a landscape.

Thus it was that David Puttnam made his way in his battered Volkswagen north up into the depths of the Highlands, Welland and Hudson at his side, only to find that the promised site was nothing remotely like my exquisite work of art.

Disappointed, desolate, the three men chugged slowly south, through the Highlands. Then suddenly Colin Welland wound down the car-window and whooped triumphantly.

“There it is! There it is! Over there! Just like Tom said!”

And indeed, there it was, exactly as I had predicted. The two mountains, the winding stream, the grassy Games field, just longing for the dance-platforms, the tents, the cabers, the expectant crowds, even the cow. And it was there, near Crieff, that we were to film our Highland Games.

But now filming began, in early April, not in , but at the Eton track near Windsor, which stood in for the Cambridge University facility. This was because the 6

University dons, having read the script, felt that it portrayed the university as anti- Semitic, and refused to permit filming there. Thus, Hugh Hudson’s Eton was to stand in for not only Cambridge but also, in later filming, for the French track on which the American team would prepare prior to the Paris Olympics.

The sequence featuring the American athletes (which actually took place in May AFTER the filming of the Olympic Games) had to be carefully choreographed to ensure that the exercises shown were representative of their period. In stark contrast, the Windsor exercises which we filmed featuring Mussabini and Abrahams bore no relationship to those deployed in a Pathe film made in 1923.

These drills showed Abrahams deploying a ludicrous cross-arm sprint action, and running at top speed with an equally ridiculous forward- lean. Looking back, as a coach, it seems odd that Mussabini, in any of his writings, never seems to have observed that Abrahams, in the Paris Olympics, sprinted with a conventional arm- action, and vertical body-position. It is therefore difficult, from this distance, to see what technical advantage Harold Abrahams secured from Mussabini’s coaching.

Things were going swimmingly in those early April days at Eton, at least till the point where I was instructing Ben Cross in digging starting- holes for the first time. For suddenly, the grim shadow of Hugh Hudson appeared above us.

“You can’t do that here,” he said.

I looked up.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because… because this, this is ETON!” he spluttered.

“Bollocks,” I replied. “Keep digging, Ben.”

Then came the famous race round the Trinity college quad, which would now have to take place at Eton, over about a third of the Trinity distance. This was another Welland fiction, because Abrahams had never actually made that run of three hundred and seventy yards within the twelve chimes of the Trinity clock. No, it had been achieved by the four hundred metre hurdler Lord Burleigh in 1927, and he had done it on his own, not in a race with an imaginary Lord Lindsay.

But the main problem would be that our Eton run would be over much less than half that distance, on concrete and with consequently very tight turns, a test that no athlete in his right mind would ever have dreamt of attempting.

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Fortunately, Nigel Havers and Ben Cross survived their dangerous Eton ordeal unscathed, and I heaved a sigh of relief, because any injury might well have stopped “Chariots” in its tracks. Truly, the Gods of Olympus had now smiled down upon us.

I have often been asked how the opening scene of “Chariots of Fire” came about, if it had been derived from any other source, if only because British Olympic teams did not have training camps until about fifty years later. And even when they did occur, it is unlikely that our team would have collectively splashed through the waves in their training!

My answer is that the credit- scene came as a direct product of Colin Welland’s love of the Olympic baton-relay sequence in Leni Riefenstahl’s magnificent film “Olympia,” showing a young Greek runner, holding his baton high, striding through the waves. And I had showed it to Colin because that sequence had continued to inspire me throughout my life in sport.

Of course, our opening sequence was massively enhanced by the music of the Greek composer , though none of the cast were to hear it until the film opened a year later. It took place on a cold, windswept beach in St. Andrews on April 28/29, 1980 with our actors scattered amongst a pack of athletes from St. Andrews University.

St. Andrews? I can almost hear you say. But I thought that it was supposed to be Broadstairs in Kent? No, that is where poetic licence comes in. So no, there was no 1924 Olympic training camp, and therefore no Broadstairs.

It took two days, and dozens of “takes” in that bitter East wind to get those unforgettable images in the can, then it was off to Crieff Hydro with our “Chariots” battalion, to film the Highland Games sequence in which Eric Liddell would be introduced. And yes, when we arrived at the Games field two days later, it was just as my pathetic little drawing had suggested, as the film’s set-designers had produced a perfect copy. Yes, there it all was, the two mountains above the meandering stream, the dancing platform, the pegged grass track, the competitor’s tents, even the cows in the adjoining field. Yes, it was all exactly as I had imagined. We were now all ready to go.

That first morning, the population of Crieff arrived in droves, their athletic brothers and sons having been recruited to jump and throw, or race in the 220 yard handicap in which our man Eric would provide the athletics world with a first hint of his talent. That was fine, but my immediate concern was that the cameramen did not appear 8 to be filming the rich diversity of a Highland Games, its throwing, its jumping, its dancing its piping. I pointed this out to Hugh Hudson, but he did not appear to be unduly concerned.

But my moment of triumph, that was yet to come, in Ian Charleson’s address to the assembled crowd. For, a few moments into it, in the adjoining field there was suddenly, as if on cue, the loud moo of a cow. Ever the actor, Ian grinned, paused and continued to address his audience. It was a truly magic moment, though my request for some tangible recognition for my cow was ignored.

Then on trundled our ragged regiment to , to Goldenacre, home of Heriots Rugby Club, and the site of my first athletic success in triple jump back in 1951 at the Scottish Schools championships. Here we would produce a magic moment in Eric Liddell’s athletics career, when in a 440 yard race against Irish runners, he had been knocked over at the first curve, had got back on his feet and won the race.

But strangely, for no good reason, now the race was to be against the French. Thus, every time I lecture in I am invariably denounced by indignant Frenchmen, rightly claiming that they were guiltless. Indeed, one even observed that a week before an Irish tug of war team had been disqualified for pushing.

But this was the way it was to be, and I had appointed Ron Sylvester, a leading Highland Games sprinter, to give Ian Charleson a wee dunt on the first curve. This would be no problem for Ron , as there were no lanes on bumpy Games tracks and sprints were therefore a full-contact sport.

“He’ll go down, Tom,” he said “I promise you that”

“Aye Ron,” I said, “But just you remember that he’s got to get up. Ian’s got the Olympic Games next week.”

It is at this point worth mentioning that my own skills as an actor had not gone unnoticed, because I had been appointed as Official Starter in this memorable race. Indeed, I had even been given responsibility for two lines of dialogue.

Those unforgettable lines were- “Gentlemen, get to your marks”. (I had sneakily added the word “gentlemen”) “Get set”. Pause. Then I would fire the starting- pistol.

“Action, Tom,” shouted Hugh Hudson, and I walked forward towards Ron and his colleague.

The two men were now stripped off. But both now wore black berets.

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“Who on earth told you to wear these berets?” I asked.

Ron Sylvester pointed towards Hugh Hudson.

I strode over to Hugh.

“Why don’t you go all the way with these lads? “ I said.

“What do you mean, Tom?”

“I mean why don’t you just give the pair of them onions round their necks and a bicycle? This is supposed to be a really moving moment, in the film, but you’re going to have Eric running past two guys wearing hats. They’ll be falling all over themselves from here to Chatanooga.”

Off came the berets, and on went the race.

It had all turned out well. But behind my aggressive approach to Hugh Hudson had been the words of David Puttnam after the Highland Games. He had heard that my advice to Hugh on the lack of field events had been ignored.

“No, Tom, let me make this clear” he said. “If you have any problems in the future with Hugh, then just you come to me. And you will win the argument. You are in charge of the film’s athletic content.”

So I was now on top of the world, I was somebody. But then, alas, out of the blue came a crushing blow to all my hopes of a Thespian career.

Because, with the day’s filming now over, I immediately ripped off my sticky moustache and threw it to the ground. The props lady was immediately at my side.

“No, don’t do that Tom,” she said. “Your moustache, it’s worth eighty pounds!”. Eighty pounds! And I had been paid a mere seventeen for my one-take performance. My moustache had been worth four times as much as me.

So now our “Chariots” caravanserie moved on to its last major port of call, a dishevelled cinder track in the Wirral. This was now to serve, in its declining years, as the Stade Colombes Paris, the site of the 1924 Olympic Games.

Strangely, my first practical task was to correct the spelling on the shop-fronts at the stadium. For, lacking the benefits of a Scottish education, Hugh Hudson had failed to notice several spelling-errors, which I duly corrected, at no cost.

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But first we had to find our stadium- crowds, and we drew, at £10 a day, from the population of , daily shuffling them around the stadium, in order to give the impression of a packed Olympic arena. But those were pre-digital days, and when we filmed the terrace-free back-straight, no one in the crowd ever moves a muscle, because what is there is a painted “still”.

But correction of French spelling was soon to prove to be the least of my problems. For two American actors had now arrived, Dennis Christopher, playing , and Brad Davis, as . And it was my immediate task to train these two men, in four days, for an Olympic 100 metres final.

Alas, Charley Paddock had been a chunky, muscular athlete, with muscles in places where Dennis Christopher did not even have the places. Puttnam’s American partners, deploying some strange logic, had insisted on Dennis Christopher merely because he had recently starred in another sports movie, the cycling-based film “Breaking Away”.

Brad Davis, on the other hand, was a stocky little actor, who had recently appeared in “Midnight Express”, as a young American drug-dealer festering in a Turkish jail. And clearly meaning business, Brad had travelled the three thousand miles to Liverpool carrying in his suitcase two twenty kilo dumbbells.

My first session with Christopher and Davis proved to be a nightmare. Because both men, though polite, proved to be strangely remote, and I seriously considered employing a medium for assistance.

That evening, David Puttnam asked me how my first session had gone, and I informed him that it had been little short of disastrous. He did not seem to be too surprised.

“Oh,” he said. “Let me have a few words with them tonight at the hotel.”

Next day’s session went like a dream. True, neither man would, even with the wind behind him be likely to break 15 seconds for a hundred metres, but no matter. They would both, in a few days, be ready for their Olympic final.

I then met with Puttnam and asked him to tell me what the problem had been.

“Drugs,” he immediately replied. “Cocaine. They’ve already been kicked of their hotel for assaulting some of the guests.”

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We were now ready for the Olympic 100 metres final, and apart from making sure that Harold Abrahams won it, my aim was to make it look real. This meant that my three athletes from Liverpool Harriers had to LOOK as if they were running flat out, against actors about four seconds slower than them. They did very well, aided by head-on shots which did not make it clear that they were gaining on my actors with every stride. That and the fact that in their thirty metre sequences I had given each of my three actors head-starts of over four metres.

Here, my sole aesthetic/technical contribution to the film was in the pre-race “tunnel” shot, from behind Abrahams, to show the essential focus of the sprinter, to run as if in a tunnel, ignoring his competitors.

One of the many fictions of “Chariots” was that Abrahams’ coach was, as a professional, denied entry to the Olympic stadium. But as a result we had a scene in which he was shown sequestered in a hotel bedroom as the Olympic 100 metres final was being held.

In Colin Welland’s original script, Sam had, on hearing the National Anthem, had gleefully launched a pint of beer, Cossack- style, into the fire. But I had scored this out, with the words “No - fist through hat”. And so it was to be.

But my problems were still far from over. I had from the outset made the point that an Olympics without field events was like an opera without music. My solution was to bring a small group of my decathletes up from to jump and throw. Impossible, said Puttnam, because the film’s meagre £3 million budget, already stretched to its limits, would not allow it. Better therefore that I deploy members of Liverpool Harriers, who had already featured in the Olympic march-past, and in the 100 metre final. But here the problem lay in the fact that these men were HARRIERS, with about as much experience of field events as they had of Sumo Wrestling.

But Puttnam resolutely refused to budge, and I therefore assembled the Liverpool lads and asked them if there was anyone amongst them who had any experience of throws. Only one hand went up, that of Arthur, a surprisingly big lad for a harrier, and I immediately enlisted him for discus and hammer.

Instinctively cautious, I decided to deploy junior implements, which meant a 5k. hammer and 1.5 k discus. After all, who on earth would know?

My man Arthur looked supremely confident as he entered the circle with his hammer dangling from his right hand.

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“Action,” bellowed Hugh Hudson.

I had decided, for safety-reasons, on a simple single- turn throw, rather than one using the conventional three turns. Arthur made two preparatory swings, but only a clumsy half-turn, and dispatched his hammer into the camera-crew, who miraculously survived without injury.

I decided against a second attempt, and now handed Arthur his 1.5 kilo discus, advising a simple, risk-free standing technique, and he managed, in a practice throw, to sling it safely up the middle to about thirty metres.

“Action,” bellowed Hudson.

But it was no different. Harry’s discus decided to take pretty much the same route as its friend the hammer, fortunately scything its way over the heads of the camera crew.

My last desperate hope now lay in the pole vault, where Liverpool Harriers had offered me Paddy, a lad who had vaulted over four metres. Back at Goldenacre, I had located in the shadowy depths of the stand an ancient bamboo vaulting- pole, which had probably lodged there since well before World War Two. I managed to get David Puttnam to slip the groundsman £5, and the pole had been brought down to the Wirral.

Paddy was, of course a fibre-glass vaulter, and did not realize that bamboo vaulters had shifted left hand up to right in the “plant” of the pole in the box. But he was a physically-literate lad, soon got the idea and was ready to vault, into a modern foam landing- area which would not be visible on film.

“Action!”

Paddy surged in, and made a superb pole-plant, with an excellent “shift”.

But my ancient bamboo pole immediately exploded, scattering its splinters far and wide. For it had been close on forty years since such outrageous demands had been made upon it, and this was the last straw. Fortunately, Paddy, ever the survivor, landed safely on his back in the foam landing-area, so all was well.

And so ask not why there appear to be no field events in the “Chariots” 1924 Olympic Games. I did my best, but my best was simply not good enough.

But we did still have the 400 metres hurdles final, albeit with a fictitious Lord Lindsey, a Nigel Havers who was now hurdling superbly. Then, with only two days to

13 go, I was approached by a tall French athlete, who announced himself as Yves Benyeton.

“Mr. Puttnam has told me to report to you for coaching,” he said.

“Which event?” I asked.

“The four hundred metres hurdles,” he replied.

“Have you ever hurdled before, Yves?” I asked.

Yves shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Only le Jogging.”

I was now in a quandary, as we now only had two days to go. Yves was playing George Andre, the French athlete who had recited the Olympic oath, and who had finished fifth in the four hundred metres hurdles.

My main aim with Yves would be to produce a simple, primitive hurdles- technique, and to avoid injury. It was therefore fortunate that we would film the final three hurdles, when athletes tend to stutter and lose their form. That first day, I took Yves through some walk-overs over low hurdles, to provide him with a basic vocabulary. Then, the next day, he undertook some hurdling from a measured seven stride approach, which went surprisingly well.

The Olympic 400 hurdles final went like a dream, with Nigel Havers hurdling to his imaginary silver medal, and Yves going well beyond his potential in fifth place . He was immediately deposited into his battered little Volkswagen, and set on his way back to Paris. Legend has it that when Yves arrived there, he was so stiff that his girlfriend had to have the car-door removed, in order that they might continue their relationship.

So now there was only Eric Liddell’s 400 metres final, to complete the Olympic competitive sequences. Here again, there had to be a slight departure from reality, because in 1924 the first 200 metres was run on a straight, though do not ask me why.

But for Hugh Hudson one reality had to be retained, and that was the fall of the American John Taylor, about thirty metres from the finish of the race. I had in my time in Glasgow as a goalkeeper hit the industrial cinders on many occasions and returned to my mother with bloody legs, so there could be no faking, certainly no second takes.

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Our Taylor was an athletic young Canadian actor called Colin Bruce, and he suggested to me that I might negotiate a fee for his fall with David Puttnam. I agreed, and duly approached the great man.

“Fifty pounds” he said.

“A hundred,” I replied.

“Done,” said Puttnam.

Colin Bruce did not disappoint us, and duly made a great fall. And half an hour later, he stood before me in the shower, the blood trickling down his legs and arms. He grinned as I handed him a thick wad of ten pound notes.

The 1924 Olympics were now at an end, and I made my way South, where there were still a few more dribs and drabs to be filmed, most of which would never make the screen. At last, it was all over.

But no, it was not quite over yet, because a few weeks later, I received a call from David Puttnam.

“We’ve had a response from the Americans to our first rough cut,” he said. “They don’t like it - they think that it’s too long by about twenty minutes. Could you go over to Radlett and sit with our editor Terry Rawlings. And see if there is anything that you think that we can take out of the athletics sequences.”

Soon I was watching the athletics sections of the film for the first time, with the famous editor Terry Rawlings, who had just finished a movie with Barbara Streisand. But, if anything, there was too little athletics in “Chariots”, and I said so to David Puttnam, that he would have to make his cuts elsewhere. Thus the eleven minutes of athletics stayed in and a shipboard romance with Ruby Wax and a Paris “Tee Dansant” sequence were removed.

All went quiet, and then, in April 1981 I was to see the film for the first time, in a tiny Soho Square studio cinema, with a group of my athletes, who enjoyed it immensely, as did I.

Then, about a week later, Puttnam asked me if I could host a BBC critic Judith Chalmers at the same cinema, and I agreed to do so.

Judith was nothing if not frank, as we made our way into the studio after a couple of drinks.

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“Before we start, I must make one thing absolutely clear to you, Tom,” she said. “I hate sport.”

Then we were plunged in darkness, and two hours and twelve minutes later the lights went on. I could immediately see that the mascara was now streaming down Judith’s face.

“Oh Tom,” she said. “That was so lovely.”

But my story does not end there or with the film’s four Oscars a few months later. No, it concludes with a hand-written letter which I received from Ian Charleson .

“You made a basically unathletic person look like an athlete, no mean feat” he said.

That was a letter which I will always cherish. Always.

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