WITH Euro 2012 coming to an end, Wimbledon beginning this week and the London Olympics fast approaching, the UK has gone sport mad once again.

Pictures from our archives show that 93 years ago this month, Kensington was home to another memorable sporting event when a boxing title match was held at Olympia in 1919.

With the First World War just over, the exhibition centre, which had been used to detain German nationals, needed a new purpose. It was let to theatre manager Sir Charles Cochran for his promotion of the heavyweight fight between Joe Beckett and Percy Frank Goddard on June 17.

Heavyweight champion Goddard, nicknamed the Fighting Farmer, lost his title to Beckett. Beckett won by a knockout when Goddard was unable to rise from the floor of the ring, but Goddard would recapture the title four years later.

Since that fight almost a century ago, Olympia has been host to many other heavyweight events including the Royal Tournament, the International Horse Show and Crufts Dog Show.

It is now 125 years since Olympia’s Grand Hall first opened to the public, on Boxing Day 1886, with the huge success of the Paris Hippodrome Circus made up of some 400 performers, 300 horses and six elephants.