Calcutta, Dec. 20: Leslie Walter Claudius, legendary hockey player and triple Olympic gold medallist, passed away in Calcutta on Thursday after prolonged illness. The 85-year-old is survived by his wife and three sons.

Claudius was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and frequently needed hospitalisation in the past couple of years. He was being treated in the ICU of a south Calcutta hospital for abnormal fluid retention. “His condition had improved yesterday and doctors were hopeful of discharging him. But today morning, it deteriorated,” said son Brandon, with whom Claudius stayed.

After India won the hockey gold at the London Olympics in 1948, The Times, London, had written: “Hockey is not worthwhile seeing if he is not playing.” The gold at London was the first Olympic medal in an illustrious career. He would take the podium three more times at the Olympiad — Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne 1956, where India retained the crown, and at Rome in 1960, where he led India to a silver-medal finish.

Along with Udham Singh, he features in the Guinness Book of World Records for having won the maximum number of Olympic medals in field hockey. When this correspondent rang the bell at his rented apartment in the Ripon Street area this July in the run-up to the Olympic Games for what might have been one of his last full-length interviews, the expectation was not just to meet Calcutta’s greatest sports hero but also witness one of hockey’s richest medal hauls.

Claudius had switched to hockey in Kharagpur on the advice of hockey star Dick Carr. “Hockey was more popular than football. And with the railway team headquartered there, Kharagpur was a hub of sports,” he recalled. As he was shorter than most players, a hockey stick had to be cut by two inches to suit him.