Lennox Lewis

After he retired from boxing, he moved with his wife, Violet Chang and his four children to Miami Beach.

Apart from boxing, he is an avid chess player and has sponsored an after-school program for underprivileged youths.

Lennox Lewis was born to Jamaican parents in West Ham, London, England. At the time of his birth, he weighed around 10 pounds, to which the doctor remarked that he looked like a ‘Lennox’.

At the age of 12, he moved to Kitchener, Ontario, in 1977 and attended the Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute. He discovered his true passion for sports while playing football and basketball in school.

By the age of 18, he realized his love for boxing and became a dominant amateur boxer by 1983 and represented Canada in the super heavyweight category at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles but lost to Tyrell Biggs, who subsequently earned the gold medal.

He chose not to turn professional after the Olympics and competed for four more years as an amateur, hoping for another chance to win the gold medal.

At the 1986 World Amateur Boxing Championship, he lost in the preliminary round to Petar Stoymenov. This did dishearten him for a couple of months, but he never gave up hope and eventually won several more titles in the following years.

In 1988, he travelled to Seoul, South Korea for the 1988 Summer Olympics, where he won the gold medal. He achieved what he had set out to do and his hard work paid off when he defeated Riddick Bowe.

After winning the Olympics gold, he turned professional in 1989 and moved to England, where he signed up with the American promoter, Main Events.

He was awarded the C.M. (Member of the Order of Canada) on November 17, 1988.

In 1999, he was conferred the most prestigious sporting award in Britain, ‘BBC Sports Personality of the Year’.

In 2008, he was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

In 2009, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.