– ‘Touched hearts’ –
The sporting world also united to remember one of its biggest names.
Retired NBA all-time scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar praised Ali’s courage in fighting discrimination.
“At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labelled uppity and often arrested, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right,” said Abdul-Jabbar.
“In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7-feet-2 but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow.”
Ali won an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and lit the torch at the 1996 Olympic opening ceremony.
Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Ali – who had been battling Parkinson’s disease for decades – “was an athlete who touched the hearts of people across the globe, an athlete who was engaged beyond sport, an athlete who had the courage to give hope to so many suffering illness by lighting the Olympic cauldron and not hiding his own affliction.”
Former England football captain David Beckham called Ali “the greatest there will ever be.”
“The biggest and the best,” Beckham said on Instagram.
About The Author
