Sportsman. McEvoy, also known as "Suicide Freddie" and "Tiger", was a womanising adventurer and a friend of screen star Errol Flynn. He was an accomplished sportsman on ice, known to compete on the edge of death. McEvoy was born at St Kilda on February 12, 1907. He moved to England with his mother when he was 10, Before the Olympics, McEvoy had proved his daring as a tobogganist on the famed and dangerous Cresta Run at St Moritz, Switzerland. He was awarded the Cresta Colours in 1936 for his accomplishments. One of the great bobsledders of the time, Bill Fiske of the US, wrote: "Freddie McEvoy has invented one of the most lethal toboggans ever seen on the run. He had a toboggan constructed of hollow ground runners ... tremendously fast on a straight course but impossible to manoeuvre around corners ..." McEvoy proved after the 1936 Olympics that he was no flash in the pan. He was second in the Curzon Cup on Cresta in 1937, won the world two-man bob championship at Cortina in 1937 and the world four-man bob at St Moritz in the same year. He retained the four-man title in 1938 and was runner-up in 1939. Deane's research shows that McEvoy was reluctant to join the war effort and left Britain for what could be best described as a playboy lifestyle on the French Riviera, New York and Hollywood. He shared a house with Flynn in Hollywood and they enjoyed many adventures, including diving expeditions to Mexico. McEvoy was a key character witness for Flynn in a statutory rape case in 1942-43, but later had a fist fight with Flynn over Flynn's use of opium. Despite the altercation, they remained close friends. The actor, quoted in Mike Seth-Smith's book on the Cresta Run, says: "I found that he complemented me. He was an athlete, a roisterer like myself, and he could be canny too, very. He had his eye for the main chance and bluntly told me he intended to marry wealth. With his physique and appearance and his charm and culture I didn't doubt he could do this." At one society party in Cannes, the already married McEvoy is reported to have made an unsuccessful play for the Woolworth's heiress, Barbara Hutton. Although he failed there, McEvoy succeeded in wooing the heiress to an oil fortune, Beatrice Cartwright, in 1940. At 63, she was 30 years older than McEvoy and promised him a yacht and a million dollars. Deane's research shows that McEvoy got the yacht, the 65-tonne Black Swan, but the money was not forthcoming. He later married a second heiress, Irene Wrightsman, but they reportedly drifted apart after her father cut her off. McEvoy's third, and final, wife was Claude Filatre. They married in 1949 and made their home on a 104-foot ketch called Kangaroo. The boat struck a reef off the coast near Casablanca during a storm off North Africa in 1951. There is some speculation that McEvoy was running arms or liquor between his home port of Cannes and Tangiers. He made it to the shore and sought help unsuccessfully from a small settlement at Safi. He returned to the floundering ketch to rescue his wife, but this time his luck ran out. McEvoy's body was found washed up on November 7, 1951, and his wife's body the next day.