Muhammad Ali

Len Johnson was a hero inside the ring and out. His defiance helped to inspire a generation of resistance against the racism that sought to prevent his champion status. “Inside of a ring or out, ain’t nothing wrong with going down.

Today in 1913, Jesse Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama. Two decades later, in Hitler’s Berlin, he won an Olympic 100m Gold which put a stake through the heart of Nazi racial ideology for all the world to see.

– 'The Greatest' – died today in 2016. He suffered septic shock while hospitalised in Scottsdale, Arizona. But he could have died 49 years earlier somewhere in Vietnam.