YOLANDE POMPEY
Looking back on the life and career of a Trinidad and Tobago sporting legend
THE man was half French and half West Indian, well-built, quiet-spoken and dignified. In the 1970s, he worked around London as a chauffeur to the High Commissioner of Trinidad and Tobago. He was no ordinary chauffeur.
When he met people he enjoyed conversing with them on a wide range of subjects, including the nation’s economy. But when they discovered his identity, the conversation swiftly turned to one topic – boxing.
Years earlier, the dapper chauffeur had earned his living in the prize ring. Randolph Turpin, Yvon Durelle, Moses Ward and Dave Sands were among those he beat, and he’d challenged Archie Moore for world honours. He was, of course, Yolande Pompey, the Trinidad light-heavy who took ‘50s Britain by storm.
Pompey was born in Princes Town, Trinidad, in 1929 to a French artist father and Trinidadian mother. Yolande’s father died when he was six and when he was 10 his mother passed away. Afterwards, he spent three years in an orphanage.
On leaving school, Pompey worked for an electrician and then in a surveyor’s office. He excelled at all sports, especially cricket and football, but entered boxing late.
Yolande cut a swathe through the amateurs, won a national title in 1948 and turned pro in ’49. Within 18 months he was light-heavyweight champion of Trinidad and the British West Indies, and with little opposition in his home country, he sailed to Britain in 1951. On the same ship were two other Trinidad champions, Ansell Adams and Rolly Blyce. They called them “The Trinidad Terrors” and all three did well in the UK.
Pompey made his British debut at the Liverpool Stadium that July and was undefeated in his first 17 bouts here, before losing a decision to the cagey American Bobby Dawson in 1954. Yolande avenged the loss with a KO of Dawson and also beat top-class men such as Durelle, Sands and Ward to earn a world title showdown with the great Archie Moore.
They met at Harringay Arena in June 1956. Pompey boxed well for eight rounds but in the ninth Moore got on top. The bout was stopped in the 10th after Yolande had been down thrice. Pompey had put up a credible display against one of the greatest fighters ever, but it’s possible he was not at his best.
“After the bout journalists came to my dressing room and were asking why I had fought such a defensive battle,” Yolande told Boxing News years later, “instead of my normal aggressive all-action style. I wouldn’t tell them in case they thought I was making excuses for my defeat. The reason was that four days before the fight I slipped getting out of the bath, fell and hit my side on the edge of the bath.”
Pompey said he had broken a rib but had told nobody – not even his trainer Snowy Buckingham – for fear of losing his world title shot. “I’m sure that apart from that accident I’d have given [Moore] a much closer fight,” he said.
Sammy Mccarthy, a British featherweight champion in the 1950s, who trained alongside Yolande under Buckingham, recalls: “We used to train every day in Jack Solomons’ Great Windmill Street gym, and we trained a few times in Brighton as well. Jack Burns was his manager.
“I remember when Yolande beat Dave Sands – who was the middle, light-heavy and heavyweight champion of Australia – and he made his mark from then on. Yolande was an excellent box-fighter. He was strong, he could take a good punch and he could punch himself. But the thing I remember most, apart from his ability as a fighter, [was] he was a lovely, charming man with a happy disposition.”
Sadly, Pompey died of cancer in London in 1979, aged just 49. A Trinidad and Tobago sporting legend, in his birthplace of Princes Town a recreation ground is named after him, as well as a street – Yolande Pompey Avenue – in La Horquetta, Arima, east Trinidad.