ercy Williams weighed only 125 pounds (57 kg). He had a bad heart, the result of rheumatic fever. He did not really aspire to be an athlete. But his is one of the great stories in Canadian athletic history, and a classic example of the influence a dedicated coach can have on an athlete's success.

Williams (1908-1982 ) did some half-hearted running in high school in Vancouver, and it was enough to catch the attention of a few track fans, who set up a race against the Vancouver sprint champion Wally Scott, in 1926. Scott's coach, the relentless Bob Granger, was amazed by the result. The skinny little Williams, running awkwardly with his arms to his sides, "violating every known principle of the running game," ran Scott to a dead heat.

Granger had a new pupil, and he began to work on Williams with fanatical attention. Granger had peculiar training techniques. He believed in conserving Williams's energy, rather than building up his strength. While other athletes warmed up on the track before a race, Williams would "warm up" by lying on the dressing table under a pile of blankets. On a cold day, Granger would coat his runner with coconut butter and four track suits and sweaters to conserve his body heat. To teach him starting techniques and arm motion, Granger had other athletes demonstrate while Williams watched, then later practiced in front of a mirror.

Still, the bizarre training worked. Williams won local race after race, and he began to share his coach's obsessive belief that Percy Williams would become an Olympic champion. In the 1928 British Columbia Olympic trials, Williams tied the Olympic 100 metre sprint record of 10.6 seconds. Nevertheless, he was an unknown in the east until the national trials in Hamilton a few weeks later. There, Williams won both the 100 and the 200 metre sprints. He was suddenly a national star.

He was on his way to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, but his coach was not with him. The Olympic committee did not pay for coaches' travel. Williams' mother and some friends quickly pulled together a few hundred dollars for Granger, and the coach sailed to Europe on a freighter, arriving three days after the athletes.

Little Percy Williams went unnoticed among the well-known competitors in the 100 metre trials, but he made it through the qualifying races and into the final. To the surprise of everyone but himself and his confident coach, Williams sprang into the lead from the start and held that lead throughout the race, despite valiant challenges from the favoured British and American champions. The delighted crowd erupted in applause.

The very next day, the trials for the 200 metre sprint began, and Williams faced a completely new set of opponents. Once again, he made it through the qualifying heats, even choosing to place second in one to conserve strength. In the final, his chief competition was from the mighty German runner, Helmut Koernig. Once again, it was Granger who came through. He advised Williams to allow Koernig to set the pace. Through the first three quarters of the race, Williams kept up with the German, then, coming out of the turn, Williams shifted into his driving finish, lunging across the tape to win by a metre. The whole stadium rose to applaud the unassuming young man who had come from nowhere to win two of the most glamourous of Olympic events.

The photographs of Williams's finishes in the 100 and 200 metre Olympic finals are classic images of an athlete straining with all his strength to achieve victory. Williams would never have the same success again. A leg injury in 1930 ended his track career. But he earned his place in Canadian sports history, and the man who never really intended to be an athlete at all moved on to other things. Years later, he said about his retirement from competition: "Oh, I was so glad to get out of it all."

he world spotlight turns onto track and field every four years, during the Olympic Games, and our national pride and anxiety seem to turn on with it. Donovan Bailey swept the country up in his own elation at his spectacular victories in 1996, just as the country felt a kind of communal shame when Ben Johnson was stripped of his victory in the 1988 Games. In fact, ups and downs have characterized the history of track and field, or Athletics, in Canada.

Way back before the creation of the modern Olympic Games, track and field events, like all kinds of friendly competitions, were held at police, firefighter and church picnics, and those spring and summer civic celebrations that were such a part of nineteenth century social life. Out of that tradition, itinerant athletes - the fastest runners and strongest lifters - roamed the country, challenging all comers and staging exhibitions. Promoters created unusual events as well, like the very popular walking contests, with events for men and women to see who could walk the farthest in 1,000 hours, or six-day indoor walks. There were matches between fat men, men over fifty, one-legged men - any events that could draw crowds and encourage bets on the side.

The Olympic movement, led by the Baron de Coubertain, was part of a newer amateur ideal of sport that ran against such professionalism with the claim that competition should be for love of sport, rather than individual gain. The ideal was always something of an upper-class fantasy, but it did succeed in separating track and field from the professional team sports that became so popular during the twentieth century.

Some Canadian track athletes did became famous within the amateur (or nearly amateur) setting. Little Billy Sherring, with a running weight of ninety-eight pounds, won the marathon event in the "unofficial" Athens Olympics of 1906. More famous was the great Onondaga runner Tom Longboat, who became a national idol when he won the Boston Marathon in record time in 1907. Longboat was an extraordinary runner who defeated the best in the world until greedy management, poor training, and his own inability to live in the spotlight crashed in upon him. Other Canadians marathoners have followed, however, including John Miles, who won at Boston twice, and Gerard Coté, a four-time Boston victor.

The 1928 Olympic Games were the high point for Canadian athletics. Besides Percy Williams's gold medal performances in the 100 and 200 metre sprints, Ethel Catherwood, "The Saskatoon Lily," won the high jump, and the Canadian women's team of Jane Bell, Myrtle Cook, Ethel Smith, and Bobbie Rosenfeld took the gold in the 4x100 metre relay. Rosenfeld and Bell took silver and bronze in the 100 metre sprint as well.

Canada's international track and field star declined afterward. There were a few exceptions - the world 100 yard sprint record of Harry Jerome, and the great careers of middle distance runners Bill Cruthers and Bruce Kidd, for instance - but it was not until Ben Johnson, Donovan Bailey and a new generation of sprinters that Canadians felt the old national pride stirred by athletics again.

Judging athletes by the standard of Olympic medals does not do them justice, however. Dedicated runners, jumpers, and other athletic competitors train with very limited government support and little hope for future riches. They push themselves out of the sheer love of the sport and the competition, trying to best their peers and their own best results, continuing to approach the amateur ideal.