James Halliday (weightlifter)

James Halliday (19 January 1918 – 6 June 2007) was a weightlifter from Great Britain who competed at two Summer Olympics. He went by the nickname "Jumping Jim" .^[1]

He competed for Great Britain in the 1948 Summer Olympics held in London, England, in the lightweight event where he finished third behind the winner, the outstanding Egyptian lifter Ibrahim Shams.^[2]

He represented the English team^[3] at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand,^[4] where he won the gold medal in the lightweight category.^[5][6][7]

Four years later he repeated the feat by winning another gold medal for the English team at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada.^[6][5][8]

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.^[1] During his imprisonment, he managed to lift a barbell (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.^[1]

He worked on the coal gang at Kearsley Power Station and later became the Electricity Board's chief safety officer,^[1] travelling around the country lecturing men on how to lift heavy bags or dig holes.