When the Scottish boxer Dick McTaggart flew back from the 1956 Olympic Games in Australia, where he had won the gold medal in the lightweight division, nothing could have prepared him for the hero’s welcome he was given after travelling by train back to his home in Dundee. He was lifted on to the platform by two fellow boxers and carried out of the station, where he was besieged by hordes of well-wishers before being borne in an open-topped vehicle to his tenement home in the tough Dens Road area of the city, with fans lining the two-mile route.
McTaggart, who has died aged 89, remembered it all clearly in old age, even after dementia had begun to dim his recall of more recent events. “It was fantastic. Tears were running down my face,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. Peter Cain and John McVicar hoisted me on to their shoulders, then carried me up the stairs and out of the station. People were on the street all the way back to my home.”
