Theodore Roosevelt's interest in boxing was well-known, but an injury he suffered from it while president was one of the best-kept secrets of his administration.

After he reached the White House, Roosevelt continued his hobby of inviting sparring partners to box, a practice he started as governor of New York.

But Roosevelt met his match in what turned out to be his final bout in 1908 when an opponent landed a punch to the president's left eye. The blow caused severe hemorrhaging, eventually a detached retina, and finally blindness in the eye. He was 50 years old at the time.

"His doctors ordered him to stop at that point," said John Gable, executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in Oyster Bay, N.Y., "but he kept it a secret. Only three or four of his closest confidants were ever aware that he had been blinded. They wanted to protect the identity of the other boxer as much as anything."

Roosevelt's opponents in the White House were young military aides, though he did bring in a professional boxer to work out with him on a regular basis as New York governor. The state's comptroller once refused to OK the bill for a mat used for his pursuit of boxing and wrestling because it was considered un-gubernatorial.

Teddy, saying he considered boxing a good, "condensed way" to get exercise, started boxing clubs in the New York police department while its commissioner and befriended numerous professional fighters, including ex-heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan. He fought as a light heavyweight at Harvard in its intramural competition.

Of the White House incident in which he was blinded, Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography:

"I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed the little blood vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to shoot.

"Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiujitsu for a few years."