Boxer. Born in Dundee, one of eighteen children, McTaggart was the first British boxer to compete in three Olympic Games; namely Melbourne (1956), Rome (1960) and Tokyo (1964). He won a gold medal in the first and a bronze in the second, both in the lightweight category. He showed off his gold medal to a crowd of 20,000 people in Dens Park in Dundee. He was British Commonwealth Champion (1958), European Champion (1961) and won a British Empire silver medal (1963).
McTaggart never became a professional boxer but, winning 610 of his 634 fights, he was one of Britain's most successful amateurs. His career after boxing was spent in Glasgow, working for Rolls Royce in Hillington.
Awarded an MBE in 1985, McTaggart was nominated to join the Boxing International Hall of Fame (2000) and became one of the first members of the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. He was awarded an honorary degree by Abertay University in 2010. Having retired to Troon (South Ayrshire), he returned to Dundee in 2014 to unveil a statue erected in his honour at St. Francis amateur boxing club gym, a club co-founded by his father. Later the same year, he was a baton-bearer for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.