Olympic Games Gold Medalist Athlete, Journalist. His story was the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film, "Chariots Of Fire" in 1981. He was born as Harold Maurice Abrahams one of six children (he also had three brothers, Adolphe Abrahams (1883-1967), a prominent physician, British Olympic athlete, long jumper Sir Sidney Solomon Abrahams (1885-1957), Lionel Abrahams (1887-1952), and two sisters Anita Dorothy Abrahams (1890-1975), and Eva Ida Abrahams (1893-1960), to financier Isaac James Abrahams, a Jewish immigrant from Polish Lithuania and his Welsh Jewish wife Esther Isaacs in Bedford, England, on December 15, 1899. The family later moved to Balsall Heath, England. He was educated locally and attended the Bedford Modern Modern School in Bedford, England, and the Repton School in Repton, England. While growing up he enjoyed a wide variety of sports including sprinting and long jumping. He then entered military service at the outbreak of World War I and served with the rank of Lieutenant in the British Army. Following his military service, he studied to be a lawyer. During that time he also enrolled at the prestigious Gonville and Caius College (a constituent college of Cambridge University) in Cambridge, England, and attended classes there from 1919 to 1923. While studying at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, England, he took a much more wider interest in sports. He became a member of the Cambridge University Athletics and served as its President from 1922 to 1923. He also was a member of the Cambridge University Liberal Club, the University Pitt Club, and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. He was also a member of the Achilles Club, a track and field club formed by and for past and present representatives of Oxford University in Oxford, England, and Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. He improved his sprinting and long jumping skills and competed in several different sports events during his time at university. He earned a place on the Olympic Team to represent Great Britain but he was unfortunately eliminated in the quarter-finals of both the 100 meter and 200 meters. He did however finish in 20th in the long jump and was part of the British relay team that took fourth place in the 4 x 100 meter. Although he was a huge success in the sprinting and long jump events he hired coach Sam Mussabini to help improve his style and training techniques in preparation for future sports events. Following his graduation from Cambridge University in 1923, he trained for the Olympic Summer Games which were to be held in Paris, France, the following year. He went through rigorous physical training with coach Sam Mussabini for six months focusing primarily on the 100-meter dash, with the 200-meter dash as secondary. He also perfected his start, stride and form. He even set the English record in the long jump 24 feet 2 1⁄2 inches (7.38 m) one month before the Olympic Summer Games were to start, a record which stood for the next 32 years. On that same day, he ran the 100-yard dash in 9.6 seconds, but the time was not submitted as a record due to the track being on a slight downhill. He represented Great Britain twice in the Olympic Summer Games that were held in Paris, France, from July 5, 1924, to July 7, 1924, first in the 100-meter dash which he won in 10.6 seconds for which he received an Olympic Gold Medal. He beat out Jackson Scholz and Charley Paddock who had previously won an Olympic Gold Medal at the Olympic Games in 1920, and Arthur Porritt, later Governor-General of New Zealand and Queen's Surgeon was third place. His personal bests were 440y – 50.8 in 1923, and 100 yd – 9.9, 100 m – 10.6, 200 m – 21.9, and LJ – 7.38 m, all in 1924. The Paris, France, Olympic Summer Games 100 meter dash took place at 7 p.m. on 7 July 1924, and Abrahams and Porritt dined together at 7 p.m. on 7 July every year thereafter, until Abrahams's death in 1978. Teammate Eric Liddell, the British 100-yard dash record holder at that time, declined to compete in the Paris 100 meter as one of the heats for the event was held on a Sunday. Both Liddell and Abrahams competed in the final of the 200 m race, however, with Liddell finishing third and Abrahams sixth. Liddell went on to win the gold medal in the 400 meters. As the opening runner for the 4 × 100 meter team he then won second place in the 4 x 100-meter relay in which he received the Olympic Silver Medal. He did not compete in the long jump. He ended up breaking his leg during a long jump and this put an end to his athletic career in May of 1925. He then decided to return to his practice of law. He did however become Team Captain of the British Olympic Team at the Olympic Summer Games which were held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from July 28, 1928, to August 12, 1928. He also worked as an editor of the Official British Olympic Record for the Olympic Summer Games of 1928. He was involved with academic Christina McLeod Innes (whom he met while attending Gonville and Caius College) and was formerly engaged to her, but the relationship fell apart due to his focusing exclusively on his athletics and the Olympics. He later met and started a passionate on-and-off relationship with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company singer Sybil Evers. He himself had a fear of commitment but later overcame this obstacle. The couple were married in December of 1936. For his wife's engagement ring he had cut a piece of gold off of his Olympic Gold Medal (both gold pieces were later stolen following his wife's death in 1963). The couple could not have any children due to his wife's medical condition so they adopted an eight-week-old boy, Alan, in 1942, and a nearly three-year-old girl, Sue (later in life she would marry the nuclear activist Pat Pottle), in 1946. During the Nazi regime of World War II, the couple also fostered two Jewish refugees, a German boy called Ken Gardner who was born Kurt Katzenstein, and an Austrian girl named Minka. He later became an executive in such organizations as the British Amateur Athletic Federation and covered sports as a radio commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation (or BBC) Radio, and as an athletics correspondent for the London Sunday Times (1925 to 1967). He also became President of the Jewish Athletic Association, and served as Chairman for the Amateur Athletic Association (or AAA). He was the author of several works including "Oxford Versus Cambridge. A Record Of Inter-University Contests From 1827-1930," "The Olympic Games, 1896–1952," and "The Rome Olympiad, 1960." On an interesting note, he was also present when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. His wife Sybil Evers passed away on June 24, 1963, at the age of 59. Following her death, he set up two awards in his wife's memory, the Sybil Evers Memorial Prize for Singing, which was an annual cash prize awarded to the best female singer in her last year at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in London, England, and the Sybil Abrahams Memorial Trophy, which was 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. He passed away in Enfield, England, on January 14, 1978, at the age of 78, and he was buried in St John the Baptist Churchyard in Great Amwell, England, beside his wife Sybil Evers. His many honors include being appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (or CBE) in 1957, an English Heritage Blue plaque at his former home in Golders Green in northwest London, England, which was unveiled by his daughter Sue Pottle and nephew Tony Abrahams. He lived at Hodford Lodge, 2 Hodford Road, from 1923 to 1930, years during which he achieved his greatest successes, which was being inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, and being inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009. A plaque from the Heritage Foundation was also unveiled at his birthplace, Rutland Road in Bedford, England, on July 8, 2012. This coincided with the Olympic torch relay passing through the town. A lifelong Freemason and a lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, his story and those along with his wife and several of his early friends and fellow Olympians were depicted in the motion picture "Chariots of Fire" in 1981. He was portrayed by actor Ben Cross in the film and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score. It is also ranked 19th in the British Film Institute's list of the Top 100 British films.