Ali claimed in a 1975 autobiography that he'd thrown his original medal into the Ohio river after he and a friend were refused service at a "whites–only" restaurant, shortly after his return to the USA having won the Olympic title – but this appears to be made up. A later biography (Thomas Hauser – Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, 1991) says that Ali and his friend were refused service in the restaurant, but that Ali actually lost his Olympic medal a year after winning it.
© Haydn Thompson 2017