Chicago likes its legends on the rough side. If there's a touch of comic pathos thrown in, so much the better. Little wonder then that the city has been agog with the exploits of Michael Bennett, the heavyweight who fights the legendary Cuban Felix Savon tomorrow. Bennett is captain of the US boxing team. He has also done hard time. Lots of it. It can't be easy doing seven years when you are known as The Toy Store Bandit. That's a tough row to harrow. Especially when you tell people that you were studying to be a criminologist before your friend got the idea to rob the Toys 'r' Us joint.

Nine years ago life held out a fistful of promise for Bennett. He was playing gridiron for North Park College in Chicago and he was good at it. His size and his guts made him a natural for the linebacker position and in his freshman year he had been player of the season. Then he got his summer holidays.

He came from one of Chicago's tougher wards, but his mother had moved him to the more affluent north side to keep him out of trouble. During the summer of 1991, waiting for work to become available in the United Parcel Service, he hung out with old friends.

One of them had a big idea. Bennett was hustled along.

"I remember telling him before we went in, `Wait, wait, wait! Not yet!'. But he was saying, `Come on, come on!' "

So they did it, Bennett the reluctant apprentice. Did it. Got caught. The mastermind gave Bennett's name away in a minute. Got a six-year sentence for himself in exchange. Bennett fell for 25 years on a first offence, reduced later to 15 years on appeal.

Hard time. Illinois jailhouses don't provide any other sort. He went from Menard to Galesburg to Danville, some of the top colleges in the school of hard knocks. After the Olympics you'd like to ghostwrite a book with Bennett, because this is a story among the 10,000. Early prison days were terrifying. He remembered his weeping mother, Yvonne, as he was led away from the dock, a voice crying out, "Lord, that's a lot of time". He remembered looking at what he thought would be his last blazing sunset. Menard, where he went first, is called The Pit and is a prison built into a rock quarry. Bennett was scared.

"I was just saying my prayers over and over. `God help me and I'll do this. Get me out of here and I'll do that.' " He remembers being abused, brutalised and ridiculed. The Toy Store Bandit. Come 'ere Barbie. Eventually he started putting up his fists.

His salvation came in the shape of some of the toughest cons in the system. Harry Jenkins is called the Pharaoh. He's serving a 200-year sentence for attempted murder and intent to kill. Isaiah Spann is known as Papa Sun. He's got 60 years to play with for murder and armed robbery. Finally and perhaps most influentially, there was Earl Good, aka Mongoose, riding a 180-year rap for murder. Those guys, with 440-years of sentence between them, created this Olympic story. Elmore Leonard couldn't write this stuff on a good day.

Bennett hasn't been back to see them. Doesn't know if he ever will. They understand. Bennett's freedom and his subsequent success would be like an afternoon in the sun with a crate of cold beer. "I'll never forget those guys," Bennett says. "When I was locked up, I decided to give it an honest effort. I wanted to stay physically fit and I grew to like boxing. They taught me the basics. I didn't know what a jab or a right hook was. They passed their knowledge to me along the way. As time went on, boxing reminded me of where I came from and the mistakes I made to keep me focused."

He fought 10 times in prison, enough to know what he wanted. He left telling everyone to watch out for him, he was going to be in the next Olympics. He got out and made straight for the mean streets of Garfield Park in Chicago, there to enlist the help of trainer George Hernandez. Bennett was rough and old and raw, but Hernandez did him the favour of believing in him. A year later, Bennett was world amateur champion (Savon, the six-time holder, had dropped out in a political dispute).

He stormed through his first Golden Gloves competition and then got through the notoriously tough US Olympic trials. People have begun paying attention to Michael Bennett. Not least himself.

"I remember when I got out, they had 20 of us who were about to be paroled and we were together in this room," he says. "And they told us: `You're all psyched to get out of here. Gettin' your freedom and all, goin' to get a good meal, to see your woman. But 17 of you 20 will be back.' Everybody's sayin, `Not me'. And I remember thinking: `No way. You got what you got out of me and no more.' I wish I'd listened to that voice earlier."

He talks to kids groups around Chicago now. Tells them what he learned the hard way. He's the voice in their ear.

"One big misjudgement can put you in the place," he tells them.

When he finishes in Sydney, regardless of how tomorrow's tilt with Savon turns out, he intends to turn professional. With the division in disarray, one title challenge would set him up for life financially.

"I took the wrong path," he says. "I owe my mother, my family, my city. I want to give them a little pride in me, show them that a person can make good with a second chance. First I want to knock the king off the hill."

Finished with trouble, he gets his chance tomorrow afternoon in what will be the defining fight of these games.