Trouble seemed to follow Wyndham Halswelle - or perhaps it was the other way around.
At the 1908 Olympic Games in London, he became Scotland’s first Olympic track & field champion by winning the 400 metres. So far, so simple.
His is a tale of good, old-fashioned track & field controversy and incredible wartime bravery, in equal parts inconceivable and moving to a modern audience.
Rags to riches, it isn’t. Halswelle was born in Mayfair, the son of an artist, educated at Charterhouse School and enrolled at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
A promising athlete on public school playing fields, he was given his commission in the Highland Light Infantry aged 19 with Scottish roots from his maternal grandfather - himself a General.
Coach Jimmy Curran spotted his talent when Halswelle was posted in South Africa for the Second Boer War and he returned to Britain in 1905 to become the Scottish and UK 440-yard champion.
He was part of the British team at the 1906 Intercalated Olympic Games in Athens, winning silver in the 400m and bronze in the 800m.
The Intercalated Games, organised to placate the Greeks after the chaos of Paris 1900 and St Louis 1904, are not officially recognised but spawned many canonical Olympic traditions - including the Parade of Nations, the two-week window, an Olympic Village of sorts and delegations as we know them.
Another blue riband achievement of Halswelle’s followed later that year when he won four Scottish national titles - the 100, 220, 440 and 880 yards - in one afternoon.
Scottish, British and world records went tumbling in the coming years - including a national 300 yards record that would, incredibly, only be broken 53 years later by Menzies Campbell in his days as a student, later to become a Lib Dem grandee.
Despite his success in Greece, Halswelle’s slice of Olympic history came at London 1908 and his role in a never-repeated result and a race that became a lightning rod for political tensions.
Imperial anxiety was the backdrop, with European empires a decade from crumbling and an ever-more confident, cross-cultural American team made Britain feel threatened.
An Evening Standard reporter wrote: “England has led the way in manly sports… she lays down the law in full assurance it will be obeyed. She will suffer lasting disgrace if the Games of 1908 are not equal in extent and interest to those which preceded them.”
James Sullivan, head of the US team, clashed with officials on accommodation for his athletes and moved them to Brighton in protest. Rules for the pole vault and 1,500m were disputed.
A fracas over the footwear used for the tug of war - the British team, from the Liverpool Police Force, wore steel-rimmed boots, and the Americans track shoes - was the least of it.
Up step Halswelle - who broke the Olympic 400m record in the second round - and went into the final facing three Americans in John Taylor, William Robbins and John Carpenter.
Carpenter was drawn on the inside - there were no lanes, crucially - with Halswelle just inside him and nothing separated the pair when they came off the final bend.
The American then ran wide to box Halswelle out and raised his right arm to prevent him from passing, nearly forcing the British athlete to the other side of the track in the process.
Halswelle was barely jogging when he crossed the line, and Carpenter had already cut the tape in 48.4. Cue political pandemonium.
The Olympics at the time were run under AAA rules, which specifically forbade obstruction, unlike similar regulations in the United States. Carpenter was disqualified and a re-run was ordered.
Robbins and Taylor were forbidden by American officials to run in the second race, leaving Halswelle to race alone to Olympic gold, to this day the one and only Olympic champion by walkover.
Halswelle’s gave his account to The Sporting Life: “Carpenter did not strike me any vigorous blows with his elbow, nor were there any marks on my chest.
"His elbow undoubtedly touched my chest and he bored me across two-thirds of the track, entirely stopping me running. It’s absurd to say I could have come up on the inside.”
Halswelle returned to the frontline as an Olympic gold medallist and was soon promoted to captain as World War I broke out.
At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, where around 7,000 British soldiers fell, he was hit by shrapnel while leading his men across an area called Layes Brook. Despite significant wounds, he refused to be evacuated and fought on, with heavy bandages.
On 31 March, aged 32, Halswelle was killed by a sniper while attempting to rescue an injured fellow officer.
It was a battle where 79 of Halswelle’s fellow soldiers died to gain 15 yards - simply, unthinkable.
The unique Olympic champion’s remains were later reinterred in the Royal Irish Rifles Graveyard at Laventie, near Armentières.