EVEREST had yet to be conquered, sweets and meat were subject to post-war rationing, the farthing was legal tender, and the TV licence cost 1920 of them, or £2 in today's money: a snapshot of Britain when the XV Olympics opened in Helsinki 65 years ago this week.

In a changing world, it's comforting, however, that some things remain constant. Emil Zatopek's victories at 5000 metres, 10,000m, and marathon in 1952 remain unmatched, and records set that year still stand to the last surviving Scotsman to have competed in athletics at those Games in Finland.

David Keir Gracie, who competed in the 400m hurdles, is 90, and this week received commemorative greetings from the British Olympic Association on the anniversary of his Olympic semi-final in Finland.

Despite a career that embraced seven Scottish titles in six years (nine Scottish records inside 11 weeks in 1952), gold and silver in the World Student Games, the UK record, and a world top-10 ranking, he considers his Olympic appearance the highlight of his athletics career. His Olympic blazer still fits perfectly, as he demonstrated on his 90th birthday at Edinburgh's Royal Burgess Golf Club in January. That blazer, he says, is his most prized memento.

Gracie ran two rounds inside three hours on the opening day in Helsinki, advancing to the next day's semi-finals. The first three qualified for the six-man final that evening. Gracie was fourth in 52.4 – faster than all but the winner of the other semi. That time would have placed fourth in the final.

A Glasgow University graduate in veterinary medicine, Gracie had a fastest 400m hurdles time that year of 52.3, and 52.7 for 440 yards. "David still holds our club records at 400m and 400m hurdles," confirmed Larkhall YMCA secretary Willie Mowbray this week.

In 1952 he broke the Scottish 440 hurdles record and nobody has held it since. The linear record went metric in 1969, so it's still in his name. Only in 1970 did his 400m hurdles mark fall, to Ricky Taylor (52.22) at the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games. This was run on Tartan Track, not the cinders of Gracie's era. His best 400m hurdles performance would have won the Scottish title 24 times since 1969, and eight times in the past 15 years. Only twice in these 47 years would he have failed to win a medal.

In addition to four successive Scottish 440 yard hurdles titles from 1951, Gracie won the flat 440 thrice. Twice he was quicker than the 1924 Scottish championship-winning time by Eric Liddell who took Olympic gold that year. Liddell had also won the 100 and 220 at the championships, but when Gracie beat Liddell's time, he was completing the 440 flat and hurdles double.

Gracie's international arrival was explosive. Early in 1952 he won both the flat 400m and hurdles for Scotland in the Caledonian Games at London's White City. He beat Britain's No.1 and No.2 one-lap hurdlers, while his winning flat time, 49.1, was a 10th faster than Liddell's Scottish championship best.

He set four Scottish records at 400m hurdles and five at 440 yards hurdles that summer, and by the end of the year he'd run five of the seven fastest one-lap hurdles times ever by a Brit. He ranked eighth in the world, second in the Empire, fourth in Europe, and leading Briton.

A 40,000 crowd at London's White City saw him set a UK hurdles record over the linear distance when second in windy, wet conditions to Olympic champion Charlie Moore who broke the world best at the British Games. No Scot has featured in a world one-lap hurdles record race since.

Gracie himself is proving as durable as the marks he set, retaining a zest for fitness and for his sport. For years, before the event's sad demise, one could observe him sitting on the wall of his home, spectating on the opening stage of the Edinburgh to Glasgow road relay.

Three weeks ago he tripped on a kerb, breaking a bone in his spine. He is already walking unaided, but must wear a brace for three months. His daughter, Susan, reports that he finds it "rather uncomfortable". That's something he is used to, because he was obliged to wear a plaster of Paris corset when he ran, due to hurdling injuries.

He is approaching rehabilitation with the instincts of an athlete in training. "Until his accident, he walked two and a half to five miles a day," said Susan. "He's an active, fit man. He wears a pedometer, and tells me: 'I've walked 10,000 steps today – what have you done?'"

Gracie never met Zatopek, but watched all three of his gold-medal races. He considers him the greatest Olympic athlete ever. He shares the Czech's motto: "don't give in", and his maxim that training only starts when one is exhausted.

He trained at Larkhall Royal Albert football ground after college, over heavy home-made wooden hurdles. But after qualifying as a vet, "my zest for training had gone," he told his daughter who relayed The Herald's questions to him.

In an interview quoted in the excellent history of Scottish athletics: The Past is a Foreign Country, he said he had switched from veterinary medicine to become a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture because he did not wish to spend every day of his working life: "with my arm up a cow's behind".