Cassius Clay and the Stolen Bicycle

In October of nineteen fifty-four, a twelve-year-old boy from Grand Avenue on the west side of Louisville went to the Columbia Auditorium with his friends to enjoy a bicycle exhibition. When he came back outside, his red and white Schwinn was gone. Someone had stolen it. He was furious. He found a police officer in the basement of the building and told the officer he wanted to beat up whoever took his bike.

The officer, Joe Martin, ran a boxing gym out of that basement. He told the boy: you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people. Then he invited him to come back and train.

The boy's name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

Six weeks after his first session with Martin, Clay fought and won his first amateur bout. He was small, fast, and almost impossible to hit. He won six Kentucky Golden Gloves championships in high school and two national titles. By the time he graduated, his amateur record stood at one hundred wins and eight losses. In September of nineteen sixty, he walked into the light heavyweight competition at the Summer Olympics in Rome and won a gold medal.

He came home to Louisville. He was eighteen years old, an Olympic champion, and he still could not eat at certain lunch counters or be served at certain restaurants in the city where he was born.

Joe Martin, who had given Clay his start, went on to coach Olympic boxers for decades. He died in Louisville in nineteen ninety-six. Of all the fighters he trained, Clay was in a category by himself. Martin said years later that he could tell immediately, from the very first session, that the boy had something different. He just had no idea yet what that something would become.