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On This Day: Muhammad Ali wins Olympic gold
The mixed descendent of a white plantation owner and black slave girl won the amateur Light Heavyweight title for the U.S. at the Rome Games at age 18
SEPT 5, 1960: Boxing legend Muhammad Ali won Olympic gold on this day in 1960 – and shortly after claim to throw the medal in the Ohio River after being angered by racism.
The mixed descendent of a white plantation owner and black slave girl won the amateur Light Heavyweight title for the U.S. at the Rome Games at age 18.
Yet, upon his return to Louisville, Kentucky, he claimed he was so upset about being rejected from a white’s-only restaurant that he threw the medal away.
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But this apparent incident, which had also been disputed by many of Ali’s friends, did not stop the fighter turning professional from earning the nickname The Greatest.
By 1964, Ali – then called Cassius Clay – had won all 20 of his first pro bouts and became the youngest man to take the heavyweight title from a reigning champion.
Ali, who was as famous for his quick wit as his fast punches, had earlier promised his opponent Sonny Liston that he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”.
Although, the swift and agile fighter was also as well known for his political defiance as his audacity in the ring.
Shortly after the title fight, he became a Muslim, changed his name and joined the black-supremacist Nation of Islam movement.
From then on, he made a habit of humiliating fellow black opponents he deemed to be “white man’s champions”.
A notably ugly fight took place in 1967 against Ernie Terrell, who insisted on calling Ali his former name Cassius Clay.
Ali stretched the bout out to 15 rounds, inflicted the maximum amount of pain and between punches repeatedly shouted: “What’s my name, Uncle Tom?”
Later that year, he refused to be conscripted and fight in the Vietnam War after telling the press “no Vietcong ever called me nigger”.
He was banned from fighting in every U.S. state and lost his right to a passport, meaning he could not fight anywhere, which forced him to forfeit his title.
A British Pathé newsreel, which also still insisted on calling him Clay and “Cass the Gas”, showed him outside a federal court in Houston during his fight with the Army.
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Ali, who is now seriously ill with Parkinson’s disease, was stripped of his title and spent four years battling with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his boxing ban.
The now 71-year-old earned increasing sympathy for his plight as opposition to the Vietnam War increased.
After a 1971 Supreme Court ruling – giving him the right to fight again – he went on to win the world championship two more times.
In 1996, at the Atlanta Games, Ali was given another Olympic gold medal to replace the one he claims to have lost.
