The story about Muhammad Ali throwing away his Olympic medal may be true ... or it may not.
Ali wrote in a 1975 autobiography that he'd thrown the medal into the Ohio River after he and a friend were refused service at a "whites–only" restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky – his home town – shortly after his return to the USA having won the Olympic title. A later biography (Thomas Hauser – Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, 1991) says that the bit about Ali and his friend being refused service in the restaurant was true, but that Ali actually lost his Olympic medal a year after winning it.
Which of these stories is true has been the subject of debate ever since. One argument that sceptics use is that Ali waited fifteen years before telling his version.
In 2016, Ireland's Own ("Ireland's favourite magazine since 1902") quoted Ali's corner man and assistant trainer, Bundini Brown: "Oh yeah, the white honkies really fell for that one."
Ireland's Own continues: "The restaurant where the alleged refusal of service took place has never been named or identified ... Ali himself said in later years, 'I never knew what I done with that medal.' ... People who knew [Ali] well said he had never thrown the medal in the river, it meant too much to him, and that it was lost during a house move."
There are implications that the allegation that Ali made the story up was itself made up by people who want to deny that Ali was the victim of racial prejudice.
An article on the Empire News website, dated 26 July 2014, reports that a Louisville resident named Robert Bradbury had found an Olympic medal in the Ohio River in June of that year, during an event known as "The Annual Ohio River Sweep". He took it to the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, and a week later he was presented with a cheque from the Ali family, to the value of $200,000.
Which would seem to settle the matter ... if you believe what you might read on the Empire News website. And I would not presume to sway you either way on that score.
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2019