Obituary: Terry Spinks, baby-faced fighter was the youngest British boxer to win a gold medal at the Olympics Born: 28 February, 1938, in London. Died: 27 April, 2012, in Essex, age 74 Had it not been for the stellar achievements of Scotland's Dick McTaggart, Terry Spinks might have been the most remembered of Great Britain's boxing gold medallists at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. For Spinks, who has died at the age of 74, was the youngest British boxer ever to win gold at the Olympics, and did so with a week's preparation as the then 18-year-old was a late call-up for the games. As it was, McTaggart's wonderful performances in the lightweight division earned the Dundonian the Val Barker Trophy awarded to the boxer who, in the opinion of all the judges, was the best performer in the ring - the only time a Briton has won arguably the most prestigious award in amateur boxing. Spinks and the older McTaggart formed a firm lifelong friendship at those Olympics, and while the Scot stayed in the amateur ranks, Spinks went on to find a measure of fame in the professional game, becoming British featherweight champion in 1960. Scots would play a critical role in that professional career, as his unbeaten record and seemingly unstoppable march to the British featherweight championship ended when Glasgow's Billy Rafferty stopped him in the fifth round of their contest at Paisley Ice Rink in August, 1958. It was Spinks" 20th paid fight, and he may well have underestimated Rafferty, who usually fought at the lighter division of bantamweight and who would go on to lose two epic contests with Freddie Gilroy for the British, Commonwealth and European titles before retiring to become a top referee. In 1959, successive defeats by knockout to Scottish boxing legend Bobby Neill of Edinburgh; on points to Derry Treanor, the Glasgow-based Irishman who later ran the famous eponymous pub in the Gorbals; and on points to Glasgow-born John O'Brien, subsequently the Commonwealth champion, seemed to have derailed Spinks" career completely. The Londoner came back, however, and on 27 September, 1960, at the Royal Albert Hall he challenged Bobby Neill for the British title. He not only won the championship but avenged his earlier defeat by the Scot, the bout being stopped by referee Ike Powell as Neill was cut around the eyes. In a rematch less than two months later, Spinks put Neill down three times in the 14th round, the final knockout ending the Scot's fighting career as he sustained a blood clot in the brain. Neill, of course, went on to be a world-class trainer of champions such as Alan Minter and Lloyd Honeyghan. Spinks lost his British title to the great Welsh fighter and future world champion Howard Winstone, and from then on Spinks wound down his career, never boxing for any other title and retiring after beating Johnny Mantle in December, 1962. He was just 24 and ended his professional career having fought 49 times, winning 41 contests, 13 of those by stoppage, losing seven and drawing one bout against the Nigerian champion Roy Jacobs. In these days when top amateurs at World and Olympic level move seamlessly into contention for professional world titles, it could be argued that Spinks underachieved as a professional, but in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a much bigger gulf between the unpaid and paid ranks, and there were many more good fighters around, especially in the lighter weight divisions. It remains a fact that no British Olympic gold medallist has ever won a world professional championship - Lennox Lewis won gold as a Canadian - and such great amateurs as Richard "Skeets" Gallacher of Dunbartonshire, the world's top flyweight in the late 1940s, did not make it to the top in the professional ranks. So to judge Spinks on his professional record is unfair, for as an amateur, he was without peer. He fought around 200 times from the age of nine, and remains the only boxer to win schoolboy, ABA, Olympic and British titles. Born the son of a West Ham illegal bookmaker, Spinks was first destined to be a jockey and started to learn the trade at Newmarket until weight problems and his prowess in the ring made him think of turning professional. He was working as a dustman when the late call for the Olympic team came through, and he fought five times in a week to clinch flyweight gold - Britain's first boxing gold for 32 years. The final saw him defeat the hot favourite, Romania's Mirceas Dobrescu. He received his gold medal from Prince Philip, who also sent a case of champagne to the huge party in Camden Town that was held to welcome Spinks home. His baby-faced features were emblazoned across newspapers, newsreels and television, and Spinks decided to cash in on his fame and turn professional. After his retirement from boxing, Spinks had a variety of businesses including mini-cab driving, working in a bookmaker's shop and a pub, where his predilection for alcohol became a serious problem that blighted his health and his two marriages. He was a successful trainer of boxers for many years, and it was as coach to the South Korean national squad at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich that he raised the alarm about the Black September terrorist massacre of members of the Israeli team. A gregarious individual, Spinks was sometimes less then clever in his choice of friends. The Kray twins were both boxers in the East End of London before turning to their life of hideous crime, and they were known to be huge fans of Spinks. Pictures of Spinks with the Krays may well have delayed the award of the MBE, which eventually came to him in 2002, some 17 years after Dick McTaggart gained a similar honour. The campaign to get Spinks the honour which has gone to almost every British Olympic gold medallist was led by his cousin Rosemary Ellmore. After he survived a drink-induced near-fatal health crisis, she and her husband Terry took the boxer out of hospital into her own home and cared for him for 20 years. On hearing of his death, Dick McTaggart spoke warmly of his old friend: "He was a real joker, he loved to play around, we were always laughing. He had a way about him, a real good chap and I'm really going to miss him. Losing him feels like a body blow. Spinks, who was vice-president of the London Ex-Boxers Association, was twice married, twice divorced and had a son and a daughter respectively from his marriages.