John Caldwell won a bronze medal in the men’s flyweight boxing at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

It was the fourth boxing medal won by Ireland at those Games and one of the most courageous performances of the entire tournament, competing in his semi-final with two badly swollen eyes from his quarter-final bout and requiring the signature of a third doctor before being passed medically fit to fight.

Born on 7 May 1938 in Cyprus Street, off the Falls Road in west Belfast, Caldwell as a young boy used to sneak down to his grandmother Anderson’s house in Baker Street to spar with his friend Mark McAleese, his grandmother delighting in watching the two boys box in her front room. At ten, he joined the Immaculata Boxing Club under the legendary trainer Jack McCusker who within weeks declared he had ‘the finest prospect in the country – a kid who has all the punches and a better boxing brain than many a top professional.’

So small was Caldwell that the punch bags had to be lowered for him and he was sometimes given a wooden box to stand on. He trained for hours and when too tired to continue would sit and watch the older boxers. He won the Ulster and national senior flyweight titles in 1956.

At Melbourne, he stopped Burma’s Best Yaishwe in the third round and then outpointed local favourite Warner Batchelor in the quarter-final – a victory that, on 28 November, guaranteed Ireland at least three bronze medals alongside the simultaneous quarter-final victories of Freddie Gilroy and Fred Tiedt.

Caldwell’s semi-final loss to the eventual gold medallist Mircea Dobrescu of Romania, despite boxing with severely swollen eyes, was the only defeat Caldwell himself believed he truly lost in seven losses across a 250-contest amateur career. He went on to a brilliant professional career, winning the British and Empire bantamweight titles and challenging for the world title.