It’s a bout time the story of Frankie Lucas was told

The tale of a kid from the streets who fights his way to fame and fortune has been told many times, but one boxing legend became the forgotten man instead, writes Claudia Lee.

Frankie Lucas was a tough middleweight boxer from Croydon with a champion’s instinct and a knockout punch.

His story is one of the wildest in the game and now, 50 years later that story has come to the stage.

Lucas was abused badly as an amateur boxer and a professional.

He was considered “difficult” by the England boxing team.

In 1972, Lucas won the British Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) middleweight championship.

He beat Penge-born Alan Minter, the favourite at the time. Lucas was only 17.

Soon after the win, the selection for the Olympic squad took place.

But the England team had no place for him. Instead they chose Minter, the man Lucas had defeated.

Minter won a bronze medal and the hearts of a nation. Lucas was back in Croydon, training in the Sir Philip Game gym in Moreland Avenue.

Now 18, Lucas returned to the ABA championship and won, again, defeating Liverpudlian Carl Spear.

He was sent to America for an international and beat the best American at Madison Square Garden.

Then he had his first major loss. Olympic Gold medalist, Soviet Vyacheslav Lemeshev, beat Lucas in the quarter finals of the European Championships. But this only helped the teenager grow.

It’s 1974, the Commonwealth Games are back and Lucas is ready. But once again England chose the man Lucas has already defeated, Spear.

Lucas had moved from Saint Vincent, in the Caribbean, to Croydon when he was nine. If he was going to go for gold, he needed to go back.

His team got to work and the St Vincent and the Grenadines Amateur Boxing Association was formed.

Lucas was the only member for St Vincent.

In New Zealand he carried the flag at the opening ceremony alone and ignored a pre-tournament function hosted by Princess Anne.

Lucas was up against Spear, but that wasn’t the problem.

He beat the England team on points and smiled in the faces of the country that snubbed him.

The problem was Julius Luipa, from Zambia. Luipa’s punches cut Lucas in the first round.

Things didn’t look good.

Then, in the second round, Lucas defeats all odds and knocks the Zambian out.

Lucas returned to the UK in his prime and full of fire, ready to become a champion and provide for his son.

At 21 he turned pro, taken on by the legendary trainer of champions George Francis, but at 26 Frankie exited alone, sectioned and in an ambulance. He had been fighting demons outside the ring too.

In and out of hospitals he disappeared from public sight, presumed dead.

But like all the greats, he resurfaced to reclaim his family, his son, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren and to find peace before he died from cancer at 69 in April this year.

Last week a play opened at Chelsea theatre to tell the story of Lucas.

First-time playwright, Lisa Lintott, 62, adapted the true story of the boxer for the stage, called Going For Gold.

But Lisa isn’t just any old playwright, she knew Lucas.

Having grown up in Maitland Park she said: “Frankie was well known.

“He was a bit of a character. I worked in the shop after school and he’d come in.

“He had an aura but was quiet, polite and he had this way of staring at you as he spoke, like a kid. It could be quite off-putting.”

Lisa said Lucas would buy the same ingredients every time he came in, ox tongue, liver sausage, rolls and milk.

After completing a playwriting course at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Lucas’ life became Lisa’s debut play.

She said: “At the time I had seen it as a tragedy – but I found something else entirely.”

“It was about family, love and legacy.”

 

Picture of Frankie Lucas used for the play Going for Gold. Picture: Going for Gold, Frank Skully