Story of Dundee Olympic hero Dick Mctaggart will be shared

BOXING: 1956 gold medallist taking part in Stirling University archives project

The story of Dundee’s greatest sportsman will be told to a new generation of boxing fans.

Dick Mctaggart, gold medallist at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and 1958 Cardiff Commonwealth Games, is taking part in a project to preserve the rich history of Scottish boxing.

Following a funding award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Stirling University created Tales from the Ring: Celebrating Scotland’s Boxing Heritage, which will open to the public tomorrow.

Mctaggart, who famously went on to win 610 out of 634 amateur contests, is among the ex-boxers and their families who have helped create the archive of material and oral histories.

He remains the only Scottish boxer to win Olympic gold to date and is regarded as the finest amateur boxer Britain has ever produced.

The lightweight fighter twice returned to the Olympic arena, winning bronze in Rome in 1960.

Other achievements included gold at the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff and silver at the 1962 event in Perth, Australia.

He also won gold at the European Amateur Championships in Belgrade in 1961 and was a five-time winner of the Amateur Boxing Association Championship.

Karl Magee, university archivist, said: “We are proud to be playing a part in promoting and preserving the rich history of Scottish boxing.”

The exhibition will be available to view in the library until March 26 and the archive will be housed permanently at Stirling University.

The opening of the archive will also mark the launch of a new set of boxing reminiscence cards by the Sporting Memories Foundation Scotland, which the university supports in its work to bring people together through the power of sport.

One of five boxing brothers from Dundee, Mctaggart beat fighters from Sri Lanka, France and the Soviet Union on points to meet Harry Kurschat of Germany in the Olympic lightweight final in Melbourne in 1956.

He won on points against the European champion Kurschat and was also rewarded with the Val Barker trophy as the most stylish boxer of the Games. When he got the train back to Dundee, thousands of people turned out on the streets to welcome him home which brought tears to his eyes.

The former St Mary’s Forebank and St John’s pupil made the journey home to his house in Dens Road in an opentopped car.

The legendary BBC boxing commentator Harry Carpenter described Mctaggart as “the greatest amateur I ever saw” and he was never tempted to turn professional despite pressure from promoters.

If there was ever an inspiration to the budding young athletes of Dundee, it would be Dick Mctaggart. It is welcome news that the success of the Olympic and Commonwealth gold medal winning boxer will form part of a new project to preserve the history of the sport in Scotland.

In a world with doom and gloom aplenty and daily opportunities for young people to be led astray, it is more important than ever that children have strong role models to look up to.

Clockwise, from top left: Dick Mctaggart arrives back in Dundee with the gold medal in the Val Barker Cup in 1956; Dick returns home from his victory in Melbourne in 1956; and, inset, the boxer in his young days.