It feels somehow fitting.
Just as the World Championships in Tokyo come to a close, my thoughts turn to a man who graced the track long before athletics had the global profile it enjoys today.
Sir Menzies Campbell became well known to many later as the leader of the Liberal Democrats.
But not everyone will remember that he was once one of Britain’s finest sprinters.
Before the political career, before the barrister’s chambers, before the speeches in Westminster, there was the Flying Scotsman on the start line, crouched low and ready to explode out of the blocks.
Campbell’s story always fascinated me because it is a reminder of how multifaceted a life can be.
Too often, we know people for just one chapter a headline, a title, a political position and miss the richness of the journey that brought them there.
In Campbell’s case, it was the rhythm of sprinting spikes on cinder tracks that shaped his early years, and it was in Jamaica, at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, that his athletic career reached one of its pinnacles.
Born in Glasgow in 1941, Campbell studied law at Glasgow University before furthering his education at Stanford in California.
He was clever, ambitious, and driven. But alongside his studies, his gift for sprinting quickly marked him out.
At university, he broke Wyndham Halswelle’s Scottish 300-yard record a mark that had stood for 53 years.
Halswelle himself had won Olympic gold in 1908, so Campbell wasn’t just erasing a time; he was stepping into the lineage of Scottish sprinting greatness.
By 1964, Campbell was on the plane to Tokyo as part of the British Olympic team. At 23, he competed in the 200m, reaching the quarter-finals, and lined up in the 4x100m relay, where Britain made the final.
To make an Olympic final is an achievement only a handful ever know and Campbell did it while also carrying the pressures of study and the beginnings of a professional career.
It is a reminder that in those days, athletes weren’t the full-time professionals we see today. The glamour of sponsorships and global endorsement deals hadn’t yet transformed the sport. For Campbell, athletics was about discipline, pride, and the pursuit of speed.
The pursuit paid off. In 1967, he twice clocked 10.2 seconds for the 100m, equalling the British record and holding it until 1974.
At the time, it earned him the moniker of “the fastest white man on the planet.” It was an inelegant title by today’s standards, but it captured the awe of his performances against global competition.
In one of those races, he even beat O.J. Simpson before the world knew him as anything other than a talented young American sprinter.
His consistency and leadership qualities were just as impressive as his speed.
Campbell captained the Great Britain athletics team in 1965 and 1966, and also led the Scottish squad at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Jamaica.
That event must have felt momentous. For Jamaican fans, the Games were a stage on which their athletes could shine, years before Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce turned the island into sprinting’s most famous home.
For Campbell, running in Kingston would have been a different kind of pressure leading Scotland against a backdrop of heat, expectation, and the unique vibrancy of Jamaican sporting culture.
He wasn’t just a 100m man either. Campbell twice became British champion over 220 yards, winning at the AAA Championships in 1964 and again in 1967.
His range across sprint distances made him a vital team member and a respected competitor across the circuit.
The nickname “Flying Scotsman” captured both his speed and his consistency and unlike the locomotive that bore the same name, Campbell’s propulsion came from sheer muscle, rhythm, and willpower.
And then, when the spikes were finally hung up, he didn’t fade away as so many athletes do. Instead, he built another life entirely.
He was called to the bar as a barrister, later entering politics and eventually becoming leader of the Liberal Democrats. In Parliament, he was respected for his intellect, his principles, and his calm authority.
Even those who disagreed with him admired his discipline and clarity qualities honed, no doubt, from those early years of training on the track.
I find Campbell’s journey especially poignant at a time when athletics feels both global and fragile.
We celebrate champions like Bolt, Dina Asher-Smith, or Noah Lyles, but we sometimes forget the generations who paved the way men and women who competed without the commercial safety nets, who trained while studying or working full-time jobs, and who carried the pride of nations on their shoulders with little more than sheer determination.
There’s something poetic about Campbell’s story coming full circle with the recent World Championships in Tokyo.
He was there in 1964, a young sprinter chasing his dream. Nearly sixty years later, athletes still chase that same dream under the bright lights of Tokyo. Sport is often about continuity as much as it is about glory the passing of a baton from one generation to the next.
Campbell’s life reminds us that success is never one-dimensional. To hold the British 100m record, to captain both Britain and Scotland, to sprint in the Olympics, to argue cases as a barrister, and then to rise to the top of political leadership that is a life of remarkable range.
Too often, we separate sport from politics, or intellect from athleticism, as if they are opposing categories. Campbell showed they can exist together, that the lessons of one arena can fuel success in another.
The Flying Scotsman is now remembered more for his words in Westminster than his speed in Kingston or Tokyo.
But for those who care about the history of athletics, his achievements remain part of the rich fabric of British sprinting.
And at a time when Jamaica continues to be the sprinting capital of the world, it’s worth remembering that a Scotsman once captained his team on Jamaican soil, chasing times and chasing history, long before the modern greats arrived.
RIP Sir Menzies Campbell
