Ernie Smith

Dubliner Ernie Smith’s first taste of boxing success was as a 12-year-old when he won the five-stone class (32kg) at the 1923 Irish Juvenile Championships. A member of the St Andrews Boxing Club since his early days in the sport, Smith won further juvenile titles in 1927 and 1928, and first appeared in the senior Irish Championships in 1931 when he lost in the bantamweight final to Paddy Hughes. Smith won his first senior national title in 1932, however, when he took the featherweight crown. Also that year, Smith won the featherweight gold medal at the Tailteann Games by beating Cardiff’s George Reynolds in the final.

Smith then went in to become one of the youngest people to represent Ireland at the Olympics when he was chosen for the flyweight competition at Los Angeles. Just 19 at the time, he lost on a decision in his quarter-final encounter with the eventual gold medallist Carmelo Robledo of Argentina.

Smith joined the Irish Garda (the national police and security service of the Republic of Ireland) and went on to win six successive Irish lightweight titles 1933-38 before winning it for the seventh time in 1940, after not defending the title in 1939 due to being out of the ring for nearly 12 months with a broken arm.

Smith reached the ABA lightweight final at London in 1933 but lost to Harry Mizler, who beat him in the featherweight semi-final the previous year. As a 24-year-old “veteran” Smith took part in the 1937 European Championships in Milano (Milan) but lost on points to Poland’s Stanislaw Wozniakiewicz in the round of 16. Seven months later Smith beat the Pole in a return bout at Warszawa (Warsaw). Smith died in a Dublin hospital in 1962 at the age of 48.