Name James Halliday Role Olympic athlete | Died June 6, 2007 | |
Olympic medals Weightlifting at the 1948 Summer Olympics - Men's Lightweight 60-67.5 kg | ||
James “Jumping Jim” Halliday (19 January 1918 in Farnworth, Lancashire, United Kingdom – 6 June 2007) was an weightlifter from Great Britain.
He competed for Great Britain in the 1948 Summer Olympics held in London, United Kingdom in the lightweight event where he finished third behind the winner, the outstanding Egyptian lifter Ibrahim Shams.
Halliday's participation was remarkable as he had been a prisoner of war in the Far East from 1942 to 1945 having been captured when Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. During his imprisonment he managed to lift a bar bell (which had been made from wood) over his head, something which the other British prisoners (or the Japanese guards) could not manage. As a result of this the Japanese commander cut the British prisoners' food rations as he believed they were getting too strong.He had weighed little more than 6 stone (38 kg) after three years as a PoW, including working on the Burma Railway. Halliday subsequently won two British Empire titles in 1950 and 1954.
He worked on the coal gang at Kearsley Power Station and later became the Electricity Board's chief safety officer, travelling around the country lecturing men on how to lift heavy bags or dig holes.