From the Track to the Movies: Tom McNab and the Legacy of Chariots of Fire

Have you ever sprinted along West Sands beach, music blaring, just to feel like you’re the main character of your own movie? Maybe you’ve even imagined yourself in slow motion? If so, you’ve been reenacting the opening scene of the iconic 1981 Oscar-winning masterpiece, Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, where a training camp of athletes in white splash their way along West Sands. The opening scene quickly became iconic, inspiring sporting stars and putting St Andrews on the cinematic map. 

Athletic Advisor and Technical Director, Tom McNab, recalled the day that the filming took place. The captured scene “attempted to create a Brigadoon atmosphere,” McNab told The Saint, giving viewers “a sense of Scotland at the time which many would have been unaware of.” 

St Andrews wasn’t the only Scottish filming location. The Highland Games section of the film was shot at Crieff Hydro Hotel in Perthshire, featuring a perfect hilly backdrop for an athletic sequence. Famously, protagonist Eric Liddell falls to his knees during the race only to then get back up and win. 

Having directly influenced the Scottish locations in the film, McNab also took inspiration from his own sporting career. “The sequence in which Liddell is knocked over in the 4 x 400 is where I competed in the Scottish schools championships 30 years before,” he said.  

Brought up in the tenements of Glasgow, McNab’s love of sport began at an early age. Before moving to the 1920s housing area in Ridgeway, “I had never ever even seen a ball,” he said. In Ridgeway, he “met a bunch of boys and we never stopped playing football, hockey, and cricket.” 

Soon after, ball sports turned into a passion for athletics. “I was training myself to be an athlete without realising I was doing it,” McNab recalled. As Glasgow had a lack of athletic facilities at the time, he prioritised the high jump because it required little equipment, unlike the long jump and hurdles. 

Despite being small for his age, McNab competed in the long and triple jump in his first lowland games at 16, whilst ‘tattie-hunting’ in the South of Scotland. “I turned up to a farmer’s field with about 100 spectators,” he said. 

When he asked where the pit was, he was told there was none. Up against barefoot competitors and with no sand in sight, McNab still managed to win. “It was all quite primitive,” he recalled. 

McNab also competed in the first Scottish schools championship in Glasgow’s Helenvale, jumping fourteen metres and finishing second overall in Britain. “I benefitted from all those years of competing with my friends,” he said. “I was training lots without realising.”

By the end of 1952, McNab retained his position as second in the British Triple Jump after competing in the British Championships. Following a few years as an officer in the RAF, he discovered more athletic opportunities in England, and in late 1953 received word that he was a potential candidate for the 1954 Commonwealth Games. 

McNab continued to focus on his sporting career over academics. “No one at school ever said, Tom, I think you should go to university and study history and English because that’s what you are best at,” he said. Despite receiving an offer to study at the University of Glasgow, McNab continued to pursue his sporting passion with a position teaching physical education at Glasgow’s Jordanhill School. 

Working at Jordanhill, McNab found the PE teaching “an absolute waste of time.” From there, he taught for two years in Bermuda and returned to England in 1962 to take up a national athletic coaching position in Dunstable. 

In 1964, he founded the Five Star award, which is utilised by schools all over the UK to get children involved in a range of athletic events. The scheme raised around £1 million per year for the British Athletics Association and trained a range of competitors, including former 1984 Olympian Seb Coe. “We not only got millions of children into athletics, but it was also pumping money into the sport,” said McNab. Known today as 5 Star 5 Steps, the award continues to encourage athletic participation in British primary schools. 

A wealth of sporting and teaching experience finally led McNab to the role of Technical Director for Chariots of Fire. Initially hired by director Colin Welland as script consultant, McNab brought extensive sporting expertise and a unique Scottish influence to the film. 

The iconic coastal opener came from Welland, who was influenced by Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 film Olympia, which portrayed the first time that the Olympic baton was carried throughout Europe by Olympians. “One of the sequences portrays a half-naked runner carrying the Olympic torch through the waves. Colin was obsessed with this. He thought it was marvellous,” said McNab. “That’s how we ended up filming in St Andrews.” 

“I sat on the beach watching it all happen,” he reminisced. The pictured athletic training camp dashing along West Sands is, in fact, historically inaccurate, as such programmes did not officially exist until fourteen to fifteen years after the creation of the film. Yet direct inspiration came from Olympia, often considered to be one of the greatest sports films ever made.

Despite film fanatics associating the hearty scene with Vangelis' famous soundtrack, the actors simply ran to the sound of the waves. The music was only added in post-production. And so, the great legacy of Liddell and Harold Abraham's journey to Olympic gold began. For McNab, watching the runners charge through the surf marked a significant point in his career, one which combined his sporting expertise with his Scottish heritage. 

So, when your parents ask to watch Chariots of Fire with you, please give it your full attention. You might just find yourself lacing up your trainers, cueing Vangelis, and heading for the dunes. 

Illustration by Dasha Andreeva