Wales’ Olympics hero becomes a builder after criminal convictions torpedo career
It’s August 29, 2004, and eight million Brits are tuned in to watch Amir Khan’s bid for Olympic glory in Athens.
Among the throngs of fans watching on their televisions back home is boxing-mad youngster Fred Evans and his mother Tracy, both of whom are glued to their screen in Pyle as Khan claims a historic silver medal against Breidis Prescott.
Even after all these years, it remains one of Fred’s most treasured memories.
“I remember sitting with my mother watching it,” he says, pursing his lips in a bid to keep his emotions in check.
“And she said…’that’s what you’re going to do’.
“I told her I’d do it as well.”
Eight years later, with 10,000 people chanting his name, Fred delivered on his promise.
At London 2012, he became the first Welsh boxer to win a medal since Ralph Evans picked up bronze in Munich in 1972. It’s an achievement that remains uneclipsed, with Fred still the most successful Welsh boxer in Olympic history.
“I actually received a letter from Ralph,” he tells WalesOnline. “I can’t remember exactly what it said but it was something like how he’d been waiting a long time for the next Welsh fighter to beat his record.”
We’re perched near the front door of the Aneurin Bevan pub on the outskirts of Cardiff[1], which crackles with the din of regulars and workmen in search of a quick bite to eat on their lunch break. All unaware they’re in the presence of a man that might well feel he has a claim to
“The medal’s in my dad’s living room. It’s on display,” he says with a frankness that slices into the myth of it all just a little bit. “The magic’s still there even now. It gets me going every time I look at it.” he adds. A broad smile growing across his face as if he’s suddenly remembered the scale of such achievement.
In fairness, that night in London must feel like a lifetime ago. There’s certainly been a fair amount of water under the bridge since.
Having been out of boxing for the last four years or so, Fred now runs a roofing and building firm in the Cardiff area. He tells me business is going well, but with four kids, and another soon on the way, attention rarely creeps too far beyond simply paying the bills these days.
But, by his own admission, boxing remains in his blood.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, to say Fred came out of the womb with a pair of gloves on is only a mild exaggeration.
“Since I could walk, my dad’s always loved boxing so he took me to the gym when I was four-years-old. He said to Nigel Davies [the man that would later become his coach], “take him on the pads”, and that was it then.
“Then Nigel said he had a show coming up and I could get in. I was four, the kid I was fighting was about seven or eight.
“I don’t really remember much of it. Only blemishes. It’s only really when I had my first proper amateur fights from about 10. I can remember them.
“It was always going to be boxing for me. I played a bit of rugby in primary school[2] but it was always the same. I couldn’t wait to finish school and get into the boxing gym.”
Growing up as part of a traveller community, those formative years, as bizarre as they may have been on occasion, were clearly an important foundation for Fred’s journey.
Fred Evans won silver at London 2012, making him Welsh boxing’s most successful Olympian (Image: Rob Browne)
But the road from grainy gyms to the limelight of the Olympic podium would be largely underpinned, and in many ways completely defined, by the tragic events on one black March afternoon in 2006.
Fred’s beloved mother Tracy and his four-year-old sister Scarlett were travelling along the A48 near Margam Park when their car collided with another vehicle. They were both killed.
It was a scene so horrific reporters at the time claimed it had reduced officers in attendance to tears. For Fred, it tore open a wound that even after all these years has not yet healed.
It probably never will.
“Family’s incredibly important to me. We’re all really close,” he says. “Always have been, always will be.
“The accident gave me a big drive. Whether it was qualifying for the Olympics, or competing at the Olympics, her memory was the one thing that kept me going.
“It’s one thing I’m proud I could do. Both for the country and for my mother. Because I did what I said I’d do.
“It was tough. But it was a fuel for me. Fuel for my career. My mother was so proud of me. Schoolboy championships, everything. She was always there following it.”
Fred, 15 at this point, incredibly claimed victory at the junior Four Nations Championship just weeks later, the first of many wins he’d dedicate to his mother.
Fred’s silver medal (Image: Mirrorpix)
Even when he stepped onto the podium in London’s Excel Arena, she was firmly at the forefront of his mind.
“Every step. That’s what it meant to me. Every step I got closer to that final I was thinking of her. The dream for me was doing what I said I would.
“So I had a couple of tears when I was up there.”
The determination to fulfil the promise to his mother helped push Fred through the long and arduous road all Olympians have to travel, much of which saw him spend a lot of his teenage years away from home.
He was 17, his talents were recognised by Team GB, and he was invited to travel out to Beijing in 2008 to experience what life behind the velvet rope might look like. Fred freely admits he was dazzled by it all. The experience hammering home just how much he wanted it. But the more his ambitions grew, the harder the work became.
“There was one training camp in Russia,” he remembers. “That was a nightmare. It was just before the European seniors in 2011, which I won with Andrew Selby.
“A couple of weeks before we went to Russia for a training camp. It was in the middle of this mountain and we were knee deep in snow. No TV or anything. I think it must have been an army camp we were staying on or something.
“Oh, I think we were eating horse meat too!
“It was eight to one fighters. I’d be in the ring for one round with one of them then at the end of the round they’d chuck a fresh one in. I think even the GB trainers found it a bit overwhelming, because the fighters there are really, really hard.
“But the idea was to toughen up. The training was just brutal. Running through snow and ice. It was mad.
“But then a couple of weeks later, I won the Europeans and I think it was definitely down to that camp. It was brutal. Just brutal.”
The road to the Olympic final at London 2012 was just as gruelling. After three bruising fights, Fred bagged himself the silver medal by beating Ukrainian world champion and world number one Taras Shelestyuk by a single point in a thrilling semi-final.
Perhaps the exertions of that fight meant the final was a step too far, with Fred coming up short against Serik Sapiyev of Kazakstan.
“It was a bit of blur really,” Fred says, clearly unable to remember too many of the specifics of that final fight.
“My trainers didn’t think I did the best I could. They think I settled for the silver.
“Do I agree with that? Not really. In one way, yes. Going back to what I’d promised to my mother about what I said I’d do.
Freddie Evans talks with his coach during the bout against Serik Sapiyev of Kazakhstan during the Men’s Welter (69kg) Boxing final bout on Day 16 of the London 2012 Olympic Games (Image: Getty)
“But once I reached the final I really wanted to win.”
Even so, that silver medal changed the Welshman’s life almost overnight.
“I don’t think it sunk in for a good couple of weeks. To me, I think I felt like I’d just come out of an ordinary tournament. But when you start to get recognised afterwards then it all becomes a bit more real.
“For a year or two after it was crazy. I started getting a lot of attention then. I seemed to have a big following in the Olympics. The support I was getting I think I was one of the biggest there.”
A silver medal, an adoring public. The world was at Fred’s feet, and hopes were high that he would continue his impressive rise by claiming gold for Wales at the Commonwealth Games two years later.
However, he never made it to Glasgow.
“We went out to Canada and I trained there for a couple of weeks,” he says. “There was no doubt in my mind that I was going, and I’m pretty confident I would have won it.
“It wasn’t until I was actually on the coach on the way to a training camp. I was pulled off the coach at the last minute.
Fred Evans pictured outside Birmingham Crown Court in 2014
“They held off telling me up until then because they didn’t want me to be distracted by it. They still hoped they could overturn it. This was literally couple of days before.
“That was that.”
Fred’s accreditation to compete had been refused. But it had nothing to do with boxing.
A few months prior, he was fined for his role in a brawl at a lap-dancing club in Birmingham, an incident that was allegedly sparked due to a dispute over MTV show The Valleys.
Missing out on the chance to compete in Glasgow, where he was one of Wales’ best hopes for a medal, clearly stung. Fred admits the weight of that silver medal may well have contributed to what he describes as the “silliness” that would go on to punctuate his career.
However, he says there’s one chief culprit.
“Beer,” he says with a guilt-ridden smile. “Getting partial to a few beers and then getting involved in the wrong crowd.
“I was maybe still on a high from the Olympics. Maybe easily swayed and off track from where I should have been kept on.”
The following year, he was back in court. This time for breaking the jaw of a family friend in a Gloucestershire pub.
The judge sentencing him at the time said: “To get where you have in the boxing world, you must have shown great dedication, self-discipline and self-control.
“But there is no excuse for what you did and you richly deserve a prison sentence.”
Fred was spared jail, and was instead handed a two-year suspended sentence.
“With me being the boxer, the press turned it into a certain way,” he insists.
“But it’s definitely a regret I have.”
But while he escaped prison, his brushes with the law effectively torpedoed his career, particularly after he turned professional in 2017.
Fred Evans on the podium after claiming silver at London 2012 (Image: Getty)
“It definitely had an impact,” he says. “I was amongst big deals after the Olympics and then after the incident happened everything went on freeze.
“I think promotors used it against me. It was all ‘forget about the deal you could have had then. It’s the deal you have now’, using that mistake and what I’d done against me. Making me fight for less money.
“I think I had bad managers too. Making promises they could never do.
“So I definitely see my pro career as a missed opportunity. I’m pretty confident I could have competed for titles. I can’t really make peace with it. You’ve got to take it on the chin.”
Fred’s pro career yielded eight fights in three years, and he feels too many in the sport abandoned him too freely.
But despite failing to hit the heights his talents initially promised, it’s obvious he still desperately misses it all.
Fred Evans hasn’t ruled out a return to boxing (Image: Rob Browne)
He hasn’t laced up a pair of gloves since his points win over Wilmer Gonzalez in 2020, but has never actually retired, although the struggle to get fights organised, combined with the disruption of Covid, means his career has been on something of an indefinite hiatus.
At 33, he’s certainly not too old to make a comeback should the opportunity arise. So, could there be one more chapter in the Fred Evans story?
“I’ve absolutely not closed the door on a return. Absolutely not,” he says. “I’m in great shape.”
“But it’s something I need to make my mind up on now. It has to be fairly soon. It’s just the timing with work. I’d love to say yeah and go straight back into it.
“But then there’s the bills you’ve gotta pay. People don’t realise any of that. They only pay attention to fight night. They don’t see the 12 weeks or so beforehand.
“I turned professional. Had nine fights. Won eight. That was all going good until Covid kicked in. So I got my head back into business. Started my own business up. I sort of haven’t got back to the boxing since then.
“At the moment I’m just your local builder.”