Dick McTaggart: A ballet dancer with dynamite in his fists

Independent

10-03-2025

Dick McTaggart, who has died at the age of 89, is widely regarded as the best amateur boxer Britain has produced but he never regretted his decision to snub the professional ranks.
McTaggart was the first Briton to box in three Olympic Games, remains the only Scottish boxer to win Olympic gold and was honoured on a series of occasions in later life.
The Dundonian was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2000 and was one of the inaugural inductees into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. He was also named the Best British Amateur Boxer in the prestigious hall of fame of the Ex-Boxers Association.
One of his vanquished opponents, Andre Vairolatto, summed up McTaggart's style in eloquent fashion.
The Frenchman said: 'He moves like a ballet dancer. A ballet dancer with dynamite in his fists. It is a privilege to lose to such a boxer. He is right there in front of you until the precise second you prepare to unleash a punch, then – poof! – he has vanished. You only realise that he is still there in the ring with you when his fists land on your chin.'
Richard McTaggart MBE was born on October 15, 1935, one of 18 siblings in a family which resided in a tenement flat on Dens Road in Dundee.
He started boxing about the age of 11 along with several of his brothers after his father, also called Richard, took them to a boxing club because they were always fighting.
McTaggart told the Courier in 2016: ' Kids used to pick on me at school, and when I took up boxing they stopped.'
He left school at 14 and got a job in a butcher's shop before training to become a cook while doing national service. He was RAF boxing champion for five years, while one of his brothers was Royal Navy champion and another Army champion.
McTaggart won the Olympic lightweight gold medal in Melbourne in 1956 and also collected the coveted Val Barker trophy, presented to the most stylish boxer of the Games – the only British boxer to do so to this day.
A hero's welcome awaited him and Britain's other gold medal winners.
'My parents had been taken down to London to meet me,' he told The Scotsman in 2012. 'My mum had borrowed my Auntie Marion's fur coat for the day. I don't think she had ever been out of Dundee before in her life.'
Another major reception awaited as thousands lined the streets of Dundee to see McTaggart being towed on an open-top car from the train station up the hill to Dens Road.
Lucrative opportunities to turn professional came flooding in.
'I got one offer of £1000 up front, which was a fortune in those days,' he said. 'But if someone is giving me £1000 to turn pro, they will be earning at least five times more than that from me fighting.
'I enjoyed boxing, but I never wanted it to become my job. I knew that I didn't have many brains, but I wanted to keep the ones I had. I have never regretted my decision to stay amateur.
'I liked to lead a normal life as well. If I wanted to go for a pint then I would. You can't do that as a pro.'
McTaggart initially boxed for England as he was based at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire but he was picked for his country's Commonwealth Games team after winning the Scottish Championship at the first attempt in 1958 and soon took gold at Cardiff.
The right-handed southpaw was the flag bearer for the British team at the 1960 Olympics and won bronze after a controversial semi-final defeat.
McTaggart became European champion the following year before being on the end of another contentious decision in the 1962 Commonwealth Games light-welterweight final when his Ghanaian opponent fainted with shock after being awarded the decision.
He competed at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo but lost to the eventual winner in the quarter-finals.
'I started taking a lot of punches in 1965 and decided this was a mug's game. So I retired,' he told The Courier in 2016.
He did so as a five-times British champion who won 610 of his 634 fights and collected 32 cups, 57 plaques and 49 medals.
Outside of the ring, McTaggart's jobs included a labourer, a 'rodent exterminator' with Glasgow Council, a Rolls Royce engineer and a member of the Daily Express circulation department. He also spent many years coaching the British Olympic and Scottish boxing squads.
McTaggart met his wife Doreen in 1962 in a cafe in Union Street, Glasgow, while she was working as a waitress. The pair renewed their wedding vows on their 50th anniversary in 2016 near their home in Troon. They had four daughters together.