Olympic archive: Cassius Clay (1960)

Olympic success is often the first step on the road to fame and fortune for aspiring boxers, writes Ian Searcey. Many champions began their journey to professional success after winning a medal at the games. Muhammad Ali, three time heavyweight world champion and a sporting icon for millions, was no exception.

On 2 September, 1960, three days before he won the light heavyweight gold medal at the Rome Olympics, 18-year-old Cassius Marcellus Clay – already an exciting prospect with an excellent amateur record – spoke to Tom Barry about his reasons for taking up boxing and about the origins of his “Romanic” name (which he was famously to abandon following his conversion to Islam in 1964, dismissing it as a “slave name”).

Confident but polite, and far from the wise-cracking Louisville Lip he was to become as a professional boxer, Clay explains he is the sixth Cassius Marcellus Clay. The name originally came from his great great grandfather, a slave who had himself been named after a prominent Kentuckian.

He admits he is unsure of the details, but as his fame is growing and the question keeps cropping up in interviews, he feels he will need to do some research on the subject at some point.

On his introduction to boxing, Clay explains that his bike was stolen and, as he was keen to find the boy who stole it, his cousin offered to train him at the gym so that he would be able to fight.

Luckily for the thief, it seems he was forgotten once the training began. By 1960 the future Olympic gold medallist – and soon to be undisputed world heavyweight champion – had stopped looking for him.