Terry Spinks

Terry Spinks
Data
Birth Name	Terence George Spinks
Weight class	Flyweight, featherweight
nationality	British
birthday	February 28, 1938
place of birth	London
Date of death	April 26, 2012
Place of death	Essex , England
style	Standard boom
Combat Statistics
Struggles	49
Victories	41
Knockout victories	13
Defeats	7th
draw	1

Terence "Terry" George Spinks , MBE (born February 28, 1938 in London , † April 26, 2012 in Essex , England ) was a British boxer and trainer .

Career

Spinks was British amateur flyweight champion in 1956 and qualified for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne , where he won the gold medal in flyweight. He had defeated Samuel Harris from Pakistan and Abel Laudonio from Argentina in the preliminary rounds , the Ukrainian Vladimir Stolnikov in the quarter-finals, the French René Libeer in the semifinals and finally the Romanian Mircea Dobrescu in the final. This makes him the only British boxer in Olympic history to ever win gold in this weight class, and the youngest British Olympic boxer of all time.

Since Richard McTaggart also won the gold medal in the lightweight, two British boxers emerged victorious from these Olympic Games, a rarity that could only be repeated in 2012 and had only succeeded three times before (1908, 1920 and 1924).

After he had already contested 200 fights as an amateur and had also been the ABA flyweight champion in 1956 , he switched to the professional camp in April 1957 and played a further 49 fights, of which he won 41. He was from September 27, 1960 to May 2, 1961 British featherweight champion. He managed to win against national champions from Belgium, England, France, Ghana, Canada, the Netherlands and Scotland, as well as a win against the eventual European champion Jean Pierre Cossemyns .

After his professional career, he became a boxing coach and managed the South Korean team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich . In 2002 he was made a Member of the British Empire .

Web links

• Terry Spinks in the BoxRec database
• Terry Spinks in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Biography at Guardian

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Olympic boxing legend Terry Spinks dies , bbc.co.uk , April 26, 2012
2. ↑ Boxing mourns death of Spinks after Olympic legend loses battle with illness , dailymail.co.uk , April 27, 2012