For decades, Muhammad Ali was among the most famous people on the planet. Ali, who died last week at 74, was thrice heavyweight champion of the world; but he was much more than that. He was - in the bitterly divided 1960s - a symbol of eloquence, defiance and racial pride. In the 1970s, he became a legend, repeatedly coming back to win boxing matches, defying age as much as once he defied the establishment. And, in the decades since, he has become even more - a symbol of defiance yet again, but this time against the degeneration of disease and the ravages of time.
As a sportsman, Ali had few peers. He dominated his sport not just because he was good at it, but because he was a meticulous and hard worker - famously rising every day at dawn, as a teenage schoolboy in the segregated Southern town in which he grew up, to run miles in the bitter cold. And he also dominated his sport, like the few others who deserve to be ranked alongside him, because he played it differently - just as Don Bradman puzzled and bewildered orthodox cricketers by failing to raise his bat in the "correct" manner. Ali refused to stand in the middle of the ring and trade punches blindly with his opponents; he would dance around them, taunt them, wear them out, and then finally finish them, with startling sharp jabs delivered at an unexpected angle from below. And it was often remarked how his physical agility extended to his use of words; to a sport where the players were supposed to be silent, or at best to grunt threateningly on cue, Ali brought a verbal dexterity with insults, boasting and analysis that stunned onlookers and only enhanced his stardom.
For four years, between the ages of 25 and 29, when Ali would have been at the height of his powers as a boxer, he fought not a single fight - for a reason that had nothing to do with sport. Drafted into the Vietnam War in 1967 - six or seven years older than most other draftees, a fact that raised eyebrows - he refused to go. He declared, first, that his religion did not permit him to go to war; and, second, that he had no quarrel with the Vietcong. Ali, who had changed his name from Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam a few years earlier, became simultaneously revered and reviled. He was reviled by those with power in the United States for his ability to focus opposition to the war, and give an edge of celebrity and danger to the civil rights movement; and revered in and out of his country for his willingness to stand up to the worst of its Cold War excesses.
In his retirement, his engagement with politics did not cease. He used his worldwide fame, and his transcendent popularity, in the cause of peace and reconciliation over and over again. In 1990, as the clouds of war gathered over the Gulf, he helped negotiate the release of hostages from Iraq. Two years later, he helped calm a South Africa emerging from apartheid, but on the brink of anarchy after the assassination of popular anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani. And after 9/11, he tried to explain, on live television, what his religion meant to him and why it was not the enemy. In his final years, as Parkinson's disease stole the verbal and physical grace which he had in such abundance, he nevertheless stood tall - a symbol of an unwillingness to let a degenerative disease steal the spirit. His once animated face was now a "Parkinson's mask", unresponsive to his emotions - but his eyes remained brilliant, and once his fingers were formed into a fist he could still sharply jab at someone's face - and stop an inch short. As a sportsman, and as a symbol, Ali was unparalleled.
