Boxing: Sad downfall of a former champion

Boxing is littered with stories of former heroes who have fallen from grace, but few can be more poignant than the tale of Frankie Lucas. A Commonwealth Games legend from 1974, who defied all the odds to win a gold medal, Lucas today is alive but far from well.

Not that the vast majority of people in British boxing know – or maybe even care – about the fate of a fighter who has a special place in Commonwealth Games history. Indeed, to this day, most people in the game believe that Lucas is dead. Before Lucas vanished – and was presumed to have died – an old friend saw him shadow-boxing in Croydon at Christmas in either 1989 or 1990. The sad fighter had his top off and it was freezing and the shoppers were laughing and throwing coins at him.

Another man told me he had seen Lucas walking by Baker Street station one afternoon in the early Nineties. His Afro was grey, his hands mutilated and when he spoke he made no sense. The man talked briefly to him and Lucas blamed the demons for his injuries. Lucas had tried to kill the demons by destroying his fists, that was probably the start of his mental decay.

When Lucas was nine he arrived in Croydon to join his mother. She had left the Caribbean Island of St Vincent to find a better life. Her little Frankie joined her but he never really fitted in. He was isolated, lonely and vicious.

Lucas found boxing and it saved him. It is really that simple and from the age of nine he was involved with the Sir Philip Game club in Croydon. "He took a lot of handling but he was always polite. It was 'Sir' with Frankie, never 'Ray'," said Ray Chapman the coach at the club.

At 18 he beat the Olympic hopeful Alan Minter just a few months before the 1972 Games. Lucas stopped Minter, but Minter won the rematch just before Olympics.

There would never be a third fight and Lucas could not even watch Minter win the world title. "Frankie, just started to cry. He left the room. He could not bare to look at the TV for one more second," said Al Hamilton, a friend at the time.

In 1973 Lucas won the British Amateur Boxing Association middleweight title. He was 19 and he had an attitude and that upset the selectors for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, New Zealand. Lucas was not picked but Carl Speare, the man he beat in the ABA final, was selected. Lucas was 20 and there was nothing that he could do.

A policeman called Ken Rimington, a committee member at Sir Philip Game, had a plan and he helped create the St Vincent Amateur Boxing Association and somehow persuaded the organisers at the Commonwealth Games to accept a late entry. The money was raised and Chapman, the new national coach of St Vincent, and Lucas, the flat-eyed outcast, flew to Christchurch.

Lucas beat Speare in the semi-final, but in the final he met the Cuban-trained Zambian Julius Luipa and he was cut in the opening round. "Frankie had to take him out or he was going to get stopped because of the cut," said Chapman. Lucas knocked out Luipa in round two to win the gold.

After the win Lucas returned to St Vincent to relax on some land that the government had given him. He did eventually return to Britain and turn professional but he was a troubled man and his career was brief and often painful. He fought just 17 times and twice challenged for the British title, losing to Tony Sibson and Kevin Finnegan.

In February 1980, at just 26 years of age, Lucas fought for the last time and he immediately faded from view. Rumours of his death started to circulate 10 years after his last fight and I tried in vain to find him a few years ago. But, there were also rumours that he was still living.

Recently I met with John Conteh, a man familiar with the demons that chase fighters from the ring to the darkest places, and he talked about Lucas. "If we were all called crazy for shadow-boxing in the street we would all be locked up. He is probably the sanest one." Conteh knew Lucas well.

I eventually found Frankie Lucas, the only gold medal winner from the tiny Caribbean island of St Vincent in the history of the Commonwealth Games. He is living – but he is not well – in a council care home in north London.