Cap, Sheikh, Lucky — everyone had a nickname when “Forty” Rego was growing up.

Few people know that Bermuda’s legendary boxing trainer was given his as a teenager, while working on a farm.

“Every time I did something, I’d do it fast,” said the 85-year-old, whose real name in Allan. “Driving horses, whatever I did, I had speed about me.

“So this guy on the farm, Sheikh Fagundo, started calling me ‘45’.

“In those days we didn’t have cars or anything like that, and ‘45’ was considered a really fast speed.”

The shortened version “Forty” persists to this day.

“I used to get cheques written out to ‘Forty’,” Mr Rego said.

“Today, if anyone calls out Allan in the street, I don’t even look around. I’m so used to being called ‘Forty’ I wouldn’t know they were talking to me.”

He grew up on Spring Hill, Warwick, and started boxing, informally, at 15.

“My friends and I would hang out at a place we called the Bulldozer,” he said. “It was across from Southlands. During the war the Americans used the place for target practice and stored their big guns there.”

Adults, mostly base personnel, would encourage Mr Rego and his friends to fight. The winner would get knives or tins of macaroni.

“In those days those were good prizes,” he said. “But sometimes someone would come along and finish the tin before we finished fighting.”

He quickly gained a reputation as a talented fighter, and his friends would ask him for pointers.

“So I guess I started training boxers back then,” he said.

His first real fight was in 1951 at Tin Top on Sound View Road in Sandys.

“I won,” he said. “I knocked Neville Tatem out in the second round.”

He went on to box at the NCO club at Kindley Air Force Base and King’s Stadium in Pembroke.

“When my mother found out she said, ‘Buddy, you’re going to get your face mashed,” he said.

But he was only knocked out once.

“I was fighting a guy called Raymond ‘Cap’ Simons,” he said. “My coach, Fred Fubler, was so excited about the fight that he forgot to put my mouthpiece in.”

What Mr Rego and his coach didn’t know was that the ring ropes were very slack.

“During the fight I went to lean on the ropes, and I fell right over,” he said. “Cap gripped me to stop me from falling. Then he pulled me back into the ring and knocked me out. He apologised after for hitting me too hard.”

Mr Rego’s boxing career was relatively short-lived. It finished in 1957 and opened the way for his career as a trainer.

“I had to stop because, you know what happened, I met a girl,” said Mr Rego. “She didn’t want me to fight anymore. We got married in 1959 and divorced many years later.”

For a number of years he worked at the Pembroke Youth Centre, with Stanley Trimm, training Olympic medal-winner Clarence Hill, Anthony “Scruff” Fubler and Norman DeSilva.

He opened Rego’s Gym in 1980; he’s trained Teresa Perozzi and continues to work with Nikki Bascome four evenings a week.

“We’re closed Fridays and Saturdays,” he said. “I don’t go to church much but I respect the Sabbath. My wife Joanne is a Seventh-day Adventist.”

They’ve been married since August 6, 1976.

“She’s a beautiful lady,” he said. “And really supports my boxing.”

Aside from boxing, he’s held a number of jobs over the years — longshoreman, quarryman, fisherman and even had a band, Allan Rego and the Palms.

They played the hotel circuit in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I played the guitar and shook the maracas,” he said. “Guys like Charles Virgil, David Durham and Clarence Burrows played with me.”

Today, he has no plans for retirement.

“I’m going to train until I can’t do it any more,” he said.

He has three daughters, Carolyn Davis, Carmyn Waldorf and Helena Stoneham and four sons, the late Gregory Hunt, Anthony and Mel Stoneham and Curtis Turner. He also has numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.