From war hero to Olympic defeat: The courageous journey of Frank Dove
Seven, eight, nine, 10 … the Belgian referee stopped counting and, spreading his arms wide to signal the end of the fight, he stared down sympathetically at the prone figure lying on the canvas. The British boxer and war hero Frank Dove’s Olympic career was over after less than five minutes of action at the Celebration Hall in Antwerp, cut down by a sledgehammer right hander to the jaw from Denmark’s Søren Petersen.
Just a handful of fans and officials were scattered around the ring on that warm August afternoon more than a hundred years ago to witness a quarterfinal bout in the heavyweight competition.
Dove was out cold for several minutes as the flustered referee and officials struggled to find a stretcher to carry him out of the ring and then had to use smelling salts to bring him round. Dove was just a few weeks short of his 23rd birthday, and British hopes had been high for him to claim a medal at the 1920 Games. After all, he was a decent light-heavyweight and had not only captured the varsity title earlier that same year but had also been cutting a swathe through the divisional ABA ranks.
But Britain was short of heavyweights, so they dragooned Dove into the Olympic team for Belgium. Only nine boxers entered the heavyweight competition – three of them British – and Dove got a bye in the first round and went straight into the quarters. Which is where his luck ran out a minute or so into the second round. Londoner Ron Rawson went on to win the gold medal, stopping Petersen in the final.
Despite Britain’s boxers winning two gold medals, a silver and three bronze, their efforts were deemed a disaster and the Daily Herald headlined their report “Our Boxing Failures” and decried our efforts while also suggesting “the fact remains that the much-despised foreigner is coming to the forefront as an artist with his fists”.
Their reporter was aghast that Dove had been beaten, writing: “Dove was the terror of the amateur championships when he won the catchweight prize for cadets. He skittled his rivals in double quick time, but Petersen did the trick to such an extent during the second round that Dove was ‘out’ for a considerable period. Petersen must have a peach of a punch. Dove is, or was, a near champion.”
I came across Dove while discovering the story of Harry Edward, Britain’s first black Olympic medallist, whose lost memoir I’ve edited and is published this month. Dove and Edward were the only black members of the Great Britain team in the 1920 Games.
Unlike Edward, Dove was born in Britain, in the City of London, at the tail end of the 19th century, the son of a hugely wealthy trader from Sierra Leone who rose to be head of the bar in Freetown. Dove Sr used his riches to ensure his children were properly educated, so Frank was duly dispatched to Cranleigh public school, where he was among the first black pupils. He excelled at almost everything and became a regular in the cricket and football XIs and part of the hugely successful Cranleigh gymnastics team.
It wasn’t until he went up to Oxford, to Merton college, that he began to box and realised that his athleticism,