“I know it is a perfect time to retire,” Lewis said then, “but somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking I’m so much better than the rest, and why give away all that money which can be earned so easily.”Easily? The trouble was that Lewis talked himself into believing it would be as easy as it had ever been, but when he got back into the ring against Klitschko he realised soon enough how wrong he was. The fight was stopped because of damage to Klitschko’s eye but the real mercy was extended to Lewis. Trainers would also be able to use the new track for exercising horses.The course design is based on a 1m 2f straight track, with a Polytrack surface currently the preferred option, which would run up the far side of the existing Rowley Mile turf course. Spectator viewing would be accommodated within the existing Rowley Mile stands.The name of Shane Kelly is soon to be absent for some time from our racecards following the jockey’s appearance at the Jockey Club yesterday. As many as three fixtures a week could be staged over the winter months each year, giving Newmarket all year-round racing which would be a significant boost for local racing stables in particular. “Unlike our turf racing, our all-weather races will be geared around lower-class horses and we would not expect large crowds. Our forecasts are based on between 500 and 1,000 spectators.”If the fixtures are allocated, the building of the new track, which will also include the construction of a new combined Members’ Enclosure entrance and racecourse office block at the Rowley Mile course, would start in early June.The £6 million scheme would be completed in time for racing to start in January next year.

Spectators are not expected to attend in any great number.”All-weather racing is a huge growth area which is predominantly betting-driven,” Lisa Hancock, Newmarket’s managing director, said yesterday. It is for a raft of fixtures dedicated almost entirely to the betting market, featuring the sort of horses which go out third lot on the Heath at Headquarters. All that remains is the nod from the Jockey Club and the granting of fixtures from the British Horseracing Board.The vision for Newmarket is one which will appal the traditionalists. The spinning noise on the plains of Newmarket yesterday was that of the old guard rotating in their resting places following the news that an all-weather track at the home of racing was another step closer.
Planning consent for a proposed artificial racing surface was granted by Forest Heath District Council on Wednesday night and the light is now on amber. If he does go today, he can take that away with great pride – along with the knowledge that few fighters have ever given the best of themselves so consistently and for so long He leaves, as he came in, a true champion.. Lewis was good enough to prosper in any age of the ring, and a conservative estimate of his ability would surely have him comfortably among the top 10 of all time. Both Tyson and Holyfield were past their best when they fought Lewis, but that was not his fault.

On one occasion Tyson paid step-aside money to Lewis, and neither was Holyfield over-eager to get into the ring with the big man born in East London, reared as a teenager in Canada but whose spiritual home, it became increasingly clear, was in the Caribbean.Lewis’s great fight would have been against Riddick Bowe, whom he had beaten in the Olympics. But Bowe, the darling of the American media, ran abjectly before the challenge, preferring to throw into a rubbish bin the World Boxing Council title once worn by Ali.The lack of such a fight has always complicated any historic rating for Lewis, but maybe it is enough to say that no heavyweight – not the great Joe Louis, or even the incomparable Ali – ever dominated boxing’s most important division more profoundly.One thing is certain. The champion shrugged – after pointing out that Tua had scarcely landed a punch.No doubt, Lewis was not one of the great crowd-pleasers He wasn’t a banger. He was a boxer who could marshall extraordinary power, and one of the great problems of his career was that he never had a single fight in which he had the chance to define himself thoroughly. He started sluggishly against Frank Bruno before pounding him to overwhelming and painful defeat on a wet night in Cardiff, a result which was somehow, and quite weirdly, translated by some sections of the media into a moral triumph for the beaten man. Lewis was also upbraided for failing to see off David Tua inside the distance in a Las Vegas fight before which the South Sea islander had been billed as a hard-punching threat. Lewis, no doubt, gave some rope to his critics, but overall it was only enough for them to hang themselves on a degree of prejudice that for those of us who openly admired him both as a fighter and and a good-hearted citizen was quite unfathomable.No doubt there was a worrisome softness to some aspects of Lewis’s nature, and perhaps the most persuasive criticism was that sometimes he was a little too tentative in his work.

Certainly it was arguable that if he had exerted himself more aggressively in the fifth round of his first fight with Holyfield he would have saved himself all the anger that came with the shocking decision to award a draw. But, typically, Lewis applied intellect rather than pure fighting instinct when he said that he was wary of Holyfield’s potential to counter-attack dangerously and, he asked, why should he take needless risks when he had the fight so comfortably under control?There were other criticisms. His one concession to reality was that it had been a “business decision” to accept a late change of opponent, Klitschko replacing the injured, unthreatening Kirk Johnson, and that perhaps he had needed more time to work on a different style of fighting. The basic truth was that for a third time Lewis had got into the ring in less than optimum circumstances.It’s a pity that his last performance now seems likely to be that one of such little authority in Los Angeles because the meaning of Lewis’s career was worthy of a much more satisfying finale.