What made Ali ‘the greatest’

NEVER has the title of The Greatest sat so comfortably on the shoulders of a sportsman.

Indeed, many who were touched by his magic and left in awe at his achievements would argue that the mantle has never been more deserved by any human being.

Because Muhammad Ali was much more than a sportsman. He was a genuinely heroic figure whose beliefs led him to him defy the American government and give a voice and purpose to his people by announcing, with pride, that black was beautiful.

He grew up an illiterate boy from the racially segregated Kentucky city of Louisville, and left school with nothing but a will to succeed and a deep conviction that he was born to greatness.

He achieved it against all the odds, challenging and transforming the notions of how a boxer should behave, what a sportsman could achieve and how a black man should be treated. He showed how courage, whether used to fight prejudice or a crushing disease, can triumph.

He took up boxing as a 12-year-old when his bike was stolen. He swore he was going to “whup” the thief and a policeman guided him to the local gym.

HUMILIATED

By the time he was 18 he was representing USA at the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he won gold. But when he returned to America, supposedly a hero, his eyes were opened to the reality of being a black man. After he was refused service in a whites-only restaurant, he threw his gold medal in the Ohio River and vowed he would never be so humiliated again. He joined radical Muslim group Nation of Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali. He was heading for a collision with the establishment and it came in 1966, when he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. He refused on religious grounds and famously stated: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me n***er.” As the anti-war movement grew, Ali’s stance made him taller in the eyes of the public and in 1970 the courts gave him back his licence to box. In the mid-1980s he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease which stiffened his muscles and reduced his voice to a whisper. But when, in 1996, three billion watched him defy shaking limbs to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta, a new generation realised what their parents and grandparents had known instinctively – that a giant had walked among us. He was a unique man who transcended sport and the world is a poorer place today.