Teófilo Stevenson

Teófilo Stevenson was born in Puerto Padre, a sugar town in eastern Cuba, the son of an immigrant labourer from St Vincent who had boxed a little. He was a tall, thin boy who learned the sport in a state gym after the revolution, when professional boxing had been abolished on the island and the amateur system was being built almost from nothing. His trainer, a Soviet coach called Andrei Chervonenko, taught him to use his reach and to wait.

At the Munich Olympics in 1972 he was 20 and unknown, and he stopped the American favourite Duane Bobick on his way to the heavyweight gold. He won again in Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980, the first boxer to take three Olympic titles at the same weight. Cuba's boycott of the 1984 Games almost certainly cost him a fourth.

Throughout the 1970s American promoters offered him enormous sums to turn professional and fight Muhammad Ali. He declined every time. He lived in a modest house, drove an old car and worked as a coach and sports official, and he and Ali became friends later in life.

He drank, and it took a toll. He died of a heart attack in Havana in 2012, aged 60, and was buried with state honours.