Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr on 17 January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. He began boxing at age 12 after his bicycle was stolen — he told a police officer he wanted to beat up whoever took it, and the officer suggested he learn to fight first. It was the beginning of one of the greatest sporting careers in history.

Ali won a gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics and turned professional the same year. In 1964, at the age of 22, he shocked the world by defeating the fearsome Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world. The same day, he announced he had joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.

In 1967, Ali refused induction into the US Army during the Vietnam War, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to the war. 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,' he famously said. He was stripped of his boxing titles, banned from the sport for three years and faced prison. It was an act of extraordinary moral courage that made him a global symbol of resistance.

Ali returned to boxing in 1970 and went on to produce some of the greatest performances in sporting history — the Thrilla in Manila against Joe Frazier, the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in Zaire, where he invented the 'rope-a-dope' strategy to defeat a much younger and stronger opponent. He won the heavyweight title three times — unprecedented in boxing history.

Outside the ring, Ali was a poet, a humanitarian and one of the most recognisable human beings on earth. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1984, widely believed to be linked to his boxing career. He lit the Olympic flame at the 1996 Atlanta Games in a moment that moved the world to tears. He died on 3 June 2016, having transcended sport to become a symbol of courage, conviction and humanity.