scorecardresearch
Friday, Mar 29, 2024
Advertisement
Premium

Wrestlers’ protest at banks of Ganga: When Muhammad Ali ‘threw his gold medal’ into the river to protest racism

However, though Muhammad Ali undoubtedly faced racism, he may simply have lost or misplaced the medal.

Vinesh Phogat and Muhammad Ali collageWrestler Vinesh Phogat being detained on Sunday; Muhammad Ali. (PTI, Wikimedia Commons)
Listen to this article
Wrestlers’ protest at banks of Ganga: When Muhammad Ali ‘threw his gold medal’ into the river to protest racism
x
00:00
1x 1.5x 1.8x

Days after the Delhi Police detained the country’s top wrestlers and slapped FIRs against them in connection with their protest against Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the medal winners said they would ‘immerse’ their Olympic and world medals in the river Ganga at Haridwar Tuesday (May 30). However, while the protesters did go the river bank, they eventually did not immerse their medals, saying they would come back if no action was taken within five days.

Earlier, a note posted by wrestler Vinesh Phogat on Twitter said in Hindi, “We don’t want these medals anymore because the administration uses us as masks when we wear them, but later exploits us. If we speak out against the exploitation, it prepares to put us in jail. We will immerse them in the mother Ganga. We believe the Ganga to be pure — we had worked hard with as much purity to win these medals.”

The top athletes have been protesting for weeks, demanding the arrest of BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, whom they have accused of sexually harassing women wrestlers.

While nothing like this has ever been seen in India before, across the world, many sportspersons have taken a stand for causes they believed in. One of the most famous such stories is of the legendary American boxer Muhammad Ali, ‘The Greatest’.

Advertisement

Ali was born Cassius Clay, a black American in Louisville, Kentucky, where racism was rampant. He was initiated into boxing at the age of 12, when a policeman heard his angry outburst at his bike being stolen and invited him to channel that rage in boxing classes.

Within six years, Cassius Clay would go on to win an Olympic gold. The Olympics website says about the 1960 Rome winner, “Much like his painter-musician father Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr., whom Ali dubbed ‘the fanciest dancer of Louisville’, the ace boxer could ‘float like a butterfly’. But his dance floor was the boxing ring. The fact that he ‘stung like a bee’ with his rapid punches, made him a nightmare for opponents and a dream to watch for millions of boxing fans all around the world.”

Festive offer

The 18-year-old Ali was understandably overjoyed at winning the gold, telling reporters, “I didn’t take that medal off for 48 hours. I even wore it to bed. I didn’t sleep too good because I had to sleep on my back so that the medal wouldn’t cut me. But I didn’t care, I was Olympic champion.”

However, things would change soon enough. Ali did take off that medal, seemingly for good, until he was presented with a replica at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Advertisement

The legend goes that when the internationally feted star returned home to Louisville, the town could not see him beyond his colour. Ali was refused service at a restaurant that served only white people, and he then got into a fight with a white motorcycle gang. According to Ali’s own account, incensed by the racism, he threw his medal into the Ohio river.

A report in the Associated Press says, “In his autobiography, ‘The Greatest’, Ali wrote that he tossed his gold medal into the Ohio River after a fight with a white motorcycle gang, which started when he and a friend were refused service at a Louisville restaurant.”

However, it has also been said that this version might not be accurate, and though Ali undoubtedly faced racism, he may simply have lost or misplaced the medal.

As a report in The New York Times says, “…after the Rome Games, few journalists followed Clay home to Louisville, where he was publicly referred to as “the Olympic nigger” and denied service at many downtown restaurants. After one such rejection, the story goes, he hurled his gold medal into the Ohio River. But Clay, and later Ali, gave different accounts of that act, and according to Thomas Hauser, author of the oral history “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times,” Clay had simply lost the medal.”

Advertisement

What is undoubtedly true, however, is that Ali worked all his life for a more equal and fairer world. In 1964, he gave up his identity of Cassius Clay, embracing Islam and calling himself Muhammad Ali.

He refused to serve in the Vietnam War, at the cost of being slapped with a boxing ban which was overturned only when he was 30, by when he had spent his prime years away from the ring.

In 1967, he said, as quoted by the BBC, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam, while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”

Ali’s wins in the boxing ring won him fans and adulation, but what cemented his position as one of the most respected athletes around the world was his uncompromising conviction to his principles, regardless of the personal cost to him.

First uploaded on: 30-05-2023 at 18:33 IST
Latest Comment
Post Comment
Read Comments
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
close