Leonard WALTERS

Len Walters took up boxing in 1943, at the age of 12, and quickly demonstrated his talents by winning a British Columbia provincial junior championship that same year. As a senior, he won a total of four provincial titles (1948, 1949 1950, and 1952) and two national titles (1949 and 1952) as a bantamweight. The latter qualified him to represent Canada at that year’s Summer Olympics, where, as a featherweight, he defeated Egypt’s Salah El-Din Fatih and Germany’s Willi Roth, before losing to Len Leisching of South Africa, an eventual bronze medalist, in the quarter-finals. He had had better luck at the British Empire Games two years earlier, where he took home bronze behind South Africa’s Johnny van Rensburg and Sri Lanka’s Albert Perera. After winning the United States national championship in the featherweight division in 1951, he was given the Norton H. Crowe Memorial Trophy as the Canadian amateur athlete of the year.

Walters turned professional in 1953 and won his first nine bouts, compiling a record of 14-4-0 by the time of his retirement in December 1958. He never contested for a major national title. He was inducted into the British Columbia and Burnaby Sports Halls of Fame in 1995 and 2003 respectively. His son Dale represented Canada as a bantamweight boxer at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and won a bronze medal.