1. Harold Maurice Abrahams was an English track and field athlete.
27 Facts About Harold Abrahams
1. 2.
Harold Abrahams was Olympic champion in 1924 in the 100 metres sprint, a feat depicted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.
3.
Harold Abrahams worked as a financier, and settled in Bedford with his Welsh Jewish wife, Esther Isaacs.
4.
Harold Abrahams was educated at Bedford School and Repton School, then both all-boys independent schools.
5.
Harold Abrahams studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1919 to 1923.
6.
Harold Abrahams was a member of the Achilles Club, a track and field club formed in 1920 by and for past and present representatives of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
7.
One of the club's founding members was Evelyn Montague, who like Harold Abrahams is portrayed in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.
8.
Harold Abrahams had been a sprinter and long jumper since his youth.
9.
Harold Abrahams continued to compete in running while at Cambridge.
10.
Harold Abrahams earned a place in the 1920 Olympic team, but was eliminated in the quarter-finals of both the 100 m and the 200 m, and finished 20th in the long jump.
11.
At the 1924 Summer Games, Harold Abrahams won the 100 m in a time of 10.6 seconds, beating all the American favourites, including the 1920 gold-medal winner Charley Paddock.
12.
In May 1925, Harold Abrahams broke his leg while long-jumping, ending his athletic career.
13.
Harold Abrahams returned to his legal career as a barrister.
14.
In 1936, when the Amateur Athletic Union considered a boycott of Hitler's Olympics, Harold Abrahams successfully led the fight against doing so.
15.
Harold Abrahams wrote a number of books, including Oxford Versus Cambridge.
16.
Harold Abrahams died in Enfield on 14 January 1978, aged 78.
17.
Harold Abrahams was buried in the same grave as his wife Sybil Evers, in St John the Baptist churchyard in Great Amwell, Hertfordshire.
18.
Harold Abrahams cut a strip of gold off his Olympic medal to make the bridal wedding ring.
19.
Harold Abrahams set up two awards in her name: the Sybil Evers Memorial Prize for Singing, an annual cash prize awarded to the best female singer in her last year at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, and the Sybil Harold Abrahams Memorial Trophy, presented each year from 1964 onward at Buckingham Palace by the Duke of Edinburgh, President of the British Amateur Athletics Association, to the best British woman athlete.
20.
Harold Abrahams was a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, which was portrayed in Chariots of Fire.
21.
Harold Abrahams was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1957.
22.
Harold Abrahams has been recognised with an English Heritage Blue plaque at his former home in Golders Green in northwest London, which was unveiled by his daughter Sue Pottle and nephew Tony Harold Abrahams.
23.
Harold Abrahams lived at Hodford Lodge, 2 Hodford Road, from 1923 to 1930, years during which he achieved his greatest successes.
24.
Harold Abrahams was immortalised in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, in which he was played by British actor Ben Cross.
25.
Harold Abrahams was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 and into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009.
26.
Norris McWhirter once commented that Harold Abrahams "managed by sheer force of personality and with very few allies to raise athletics from a minor to a major national sport".
27.
Archives of Harold Abrahams are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.