rome 1960 the olympics that changed the world

Training began each day at 4am as he pounded his steel-toed work boots through the deadened streets of Louisville. The only hype and fanfare came from Clay himself, but behind the brash statements was a training regime that was anything but amateur.

Obviously he included himself in this select group.Ĭlay’s credentials as an amateur boxer were there for all to see: 100 victories in 108 bouts, six Kentucky Golden Gloves championships, successive light-heavyweight National Amateur Athletic Union titles (19) and two Golden Gloves titles in a row (19).īefore the Games, Sports Illustrated declared that he was the USA’s best hope for a medal in boxing, but there was no real sense that a worldwide star was about to be unleashed. Others recall Clay distracting himself from his fears by holding forth on the flight and decreeing who among the boxing team would win a gold medal. In David Remnick’s King of the World Joe Martin’s son, Joe Jr, claims that during a rough flight Clay prayed in the aisle with the parachute on his back. Accounts differ as to Clay’s behaviour once the flight was airborne. Before departing he visited an army surplus store and purchased a parachute, which he kept strapped on throughout the flight. Anyway I finally took him out to Central Park here in Louisville and we had a long talk for a couple or three hours, and I calmed him down and convinced him if he wanted to be heavyweight champion of the world, then he had to go to Rome and win the Olympics.” I said: ‘Well, you’ll lose the opportunity of being a great fighter,’ and he said: ‘Well, I’m not gonna go.’ He wanted to take a boat or something. “We had a rough flight going to California for the trials and so when it came to go to Rome he said he wasn’t gonna fly, and that he wouldn’t go. “He was afraid of flying,” Martin told an HBO Muhammad Ali special. Martin was the policeman and boxing trainer who told a pepped-up 12-year-old that if he really wanted to deal with the thief who stole his bike, he should first learn how to fight. In the end it took a meeting with Joe Martin in Louisville’s Central Park to convince him to travel. He was destined for greatness with or without a medal dangling from his neck. When told neither was possible he decided he could do without the Olympic Games. He asked if he could make his way there by train. In later years he became a master of disguising his fears (of Sonny Liston, George Foreman or Joe Frazier) but the teenage Clay had no qualms revealing he was scared. A rocky flight to California for the Olympic trials cemented his view that, aside from when he was dancing in the ring, his feet should remain on the ground. The 18-year-old from Louisville had been on planes before.

Rome 1960 the olympics that changed the world