Following hard on the heels of Tom Heeney challenging Gene Tunney for the World Heavyweight title 90 years ago, is the ninetieth anniversary of  New Zealand’s first Gold Medal at the modern Olympics.

The very first New Zealand Olympic Gold Medal was won by Wellington apprentice plumber Edward “Ted” Morgan. Although the Modern Olympics’ were first held in 1896, it wasn’t until 1920 that the black uniform was seen in the arena. While Kiwi Malcolm Champion won our countries first Olympic Gold Medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay – he was wearing the uniform of the combined Australasia team

It is doubtful whether the name of New Zealand Boxing ever has stood higher in the eyes of outsiders, than it did in 1928. That was the year in which Heeney fought Tunney for the World Heavyweight title and it was the year that Ted Morgan won an Olympic Gold Medal.

Morgan, Lightweight champion of the Domion, was half of a two-man New Zealand boxing team chosen for the Amsterdam Olympics. Fellow Wellingtonian Alf Cleverly the Light Heavyweight titleholder was the other, A southpaw, Ted was a protégé of Tim Tracy and was born a year after his venerable mentor’s pioneering bout with Hock Keys in 1905.

From the first time that this quietly spoken Wellington College boy first delivered a punch at Tracy’s old Willis Street gymnasium, there was no doubting the lad’s potential greatness. Unlike the general run of southpaws, Ted plied a good left hand besides the customary “loaded left”. It was this ambidexterity of the Wellington boxer which was to prove a big factor in his success. Opponents moving away from the left, were hooked back into line with a stinging right, which was anything but the sloppy pawing thing of so many left-handed pugilists.

When he finally received the nod from the Olympic selectors after winning the National title in 1927, Ted had lost only two of his 24 bouts – to Jack Rodd of Blenheim, who he defeated in each of their other four fights and to Harold Kindly one of the very best of a strong Otago crop.

On the 3^rd June 1928, five weeks after leaving Wellington on board the SS Remora, Morgan and Cleverley, along with four swimmers and three track and field athletes berthed at Southampton. But disaster overtook Ted before he even found his land legs. He had dislocated the first knuckle of his left hand, the most potent weapon of a southpaw, in a gymnasium spar.

The injured member subsequently made some response to treatment, although it never completely healed and apart from the anxiety it caused, made the boxers eyes water with pain every time he landed a solid blow with it. A further problem was the increasing poundage, put on, on the voyage to the Northern Hemisphere which finally forced Morgan into the Welterweight division. There was no Light Welterweight class at the time and although he weighted under 10 stone, he had to compete in a division full of fighters who were strong at around the 10 stone 7lbs Welterweight limit.

But these handicaps only tended to bring out the best in this quiet phlegmatic man who, at least surface wise gave no indication of undue concern. A Swede named Johanson was Morgan’s first victim, but it wasn’t until he had passed the second hurdle of Frenchman Calataud, that people at home began to envisage a gold medal.

After the win over Calataud a leading journalist at the Games wrote “The best boxer amongst the British Empire contingent is Morgan, the New Zealander. He knows how to use both hands, he hits hard with a minimum of effort and his right bursts holes in the defence of his opponents”. “Morgan is one of the best boxer/fighters, if not the best, participating”.

And so it was that this 21year old apprentice plumber from Wellington went on to outbox and outfight two more opponents – Canovan from Italy and in the final Landini who was an Argentinean knock-out specialist, to give New Zealand its first Olympic Gold Medal.

Before quitting the Netherlands, Ted received tempting offers from England and the United States to box as a professional. After he returned home from the Games, he turned pro in New Zealand, never living up to the peak of expectation, being continually plagued by the hand injury he suffered on the way to the Olympics.

Ted Morgan later became the proprietor of a thriving little plumbing concern in Wellington and refereed bouts for the Wellington Boxing Association. He died in November 1952 at the early age of forty five. Every year at the Boxing New Zealand National Championships, Ted is remembered, with the presentation of the Ted Morgan Cup to the winner of the Welterweight title. (Adapted from Brian O’Brien’s Kiwis With Gloves On)

TED MORGAN – FROM THE BEGINNING

Ted Morgan was trained by Tim Tracy from his very basic gym near the centre of Wellington. In this chapter we recall the contribution that Tim Tracy had on the start of boxing in the country

A native of County Clare, Ireland, where he was born on April 20 1874, Tim Tracy was a two-year-old tot when his parents brought him out to New Zealand. Early in his life Tim was apprenticed to the bootmaking trade and thus began an association with leather, which he later turned to his advantage with leather gloves for the boxing ring.

Always actively interested in boxing but lacking the opportunity to indulge his hobby, Tim had a few lessons from the itinerant Charlie “Darky” Richardson before fitting out his own little gymnasium, at the rear of his bootmakers shop in upper Willis Street, Wellington. In years to come the Tracy gym, which in reality was only a converted room, became a regular meeting place for all of Wellingtons boxing fraternity.

It appeared that Tim Tracy had his first contest with an American named “Kid” Parker in 1904 at the old Exchange building on Lambton Quay. About a year after Tracy’s first contest, from which he emerged as the winner, the Wellington Boxing Association wanting to provide the local interest for its inaugural professional contest on 20 September 1905 approached him. The matchmakers agreed that the most suitable way to elevate boxing in the public eye would be to import a boxer of the right type from Australia. The Wellington association wrote to W F Corbett who as “Solar Plexus” was regarded as one of the finest boxing writers in Australia. Corbett was asked to engage for the princely sum of thirty guineas a boxer capable of teaching New Zealand boxers the finer points of the game, while actually engaged in competition.

Corbett lost no time in recommending and engaging George “Hock” Keys, Lightweight champion of New South Wales and later Australia. Keys was a young veteran of twenty five fights and seven years ring experience. The New Zealand association agreed that the Lightweight championship of the colony would be at stake.

The fight was everything that the WBA had hoped for. The patrons who packed the Opera House saw the finest in aggressive boxing of a high technical order from Keys, and spirited resistance from the local man, who was outclassed in the second fight of his career but not put to the sword.

Tim Tracy went on to have some 36 contests until 1915, most of which were for the New Zealand Professional Lightweight championship. In his third contest he defeated ageing Billy “Torpedo” Murphy, who became the only native born World Champion when he beat Ike Weir for the world featherweight title in San Francisco during 1890. The Tracy v Murphy contest was staged in Stratford and Tim stopped Murphy in the fourth round.

Tim Tracy continued to train for many years and became the second President of the New Zealand Boxing Instructors and Trainers Federation, which was formed in 1948.

Legendary New Zealand Trainer Richard (Dick) Dunn introduction to boxing was at the Tim Tracy School of Boxing in Wellington. “When I was around fourteen I was always frequenting the local farrier in Taranaki Street, not far from where I lived. From Taranaki Street you could throw a stone on the roof of all the Wellington boxing champions of that era. The 1920’s were the golden years of New Zealand boxing. Every boy on the street claimed they wanted to be a boxer.”

“After a while the farrier asked me if I wanted to be a boxer?  When I replied yes he took me along to Tim Tracy’s gym in Willis street and paid the one and sixpence entrance fee. There was only a rope across the front of the room and three walls. There were about twenty boys there and if you got caught on the walls you had to fight your way out. All Tracy taught was how to win and it was really rough and tough, you had to learn to fight or you wouldn’t survive.”

“He gave the new boys one boxing lesson and then put you in the ring. If he thought you had what it took, you were invited back and it didn’t cost you anything. The next week after my lesson I went back and was put in the ring with Ted Morgan (1928 Olympic Welterweight champion). We all sat on a form against the wall and Tracy would say you and you get in the ring. It wasn’t very scientific boxing that he taught and he was a tough trainer.”

Source “The Story So Far”

Article added: Monday 20 August 2018