Eric Liddell 100: Edinburgh record shop wins competition for Olympic window display

More than 30 shops and businesses decorated their windows and frontages to help mark the centenary of the Edinburgh Olympic hero’s gold medal triumph in the 400 metres at the 1924 Paris games.

A total of 760 people voted to choose the best display. Mark and Lottie Thorne took first place with their five giant Olympic rings designed to look like records and featuring five Scottish Olympic gold medallists.

Mark Thorne and his wife Lottie with their winning window display | supplied

“It was a lovely surprise,” said Mark. “It’s all down to my wife. We designed it together but she was the one who painted it and stuck it up. It fell down a few times but we persevered just like a proper athlete should.

“Rather than focus on Britain, we wanted to focus on Scotland so I had a good look into some Scottish-specific gold medal winners. And I chose five - one for each ring - that I thought would represent Scotland well.

“At the first modern Olympics in 1896 in Athens there was a guy called Launceston Elliot and he won Britain’s first ever gold medal, for one-armed weight-lifting, but he also happened to be Scottish.

“Being a record shop, we made the rings look like records and in the middle of each one we had a face. The theme was ‘Celebrating Scotland’s Chariots of Fire’ so that fed into the music again because that was obviously the film about Eric Liddell and the music by Vangelis is pretty much the music of the Olympics.” The other Scottish gold medal winners who featured in the display were Eric Liddell, Chris Hoy, Katherine Grainger and Andy Murray.

Mike Billinghurst, of 181 Delicatessen in Bruntsfield Place, one of the competition organisers, said Thorne Records had got “a high percentage” of the votes.

Second place went to Toys Galore in Morningside Road and third was Chez Roger in Colinton Road.

The centenary of Eric Liddell’s 1924 triumph is being marked by a series of events organised by The Eric Liddell 100, set up by the Eric Liddell Community, a care charity and community hub based at Morningside’s Holy Corner.