Boxing Coach Nappi Dies at 75 : Olympics: He guided fighters to 14 gold medals.

Pat Nappi, the most successful and also the most controversial of all U.S. Olympic boxing coaches, died Sunday after a short illness at a Syracuse, N.Y., hospital. He was 75.

Nappi, who lived in Syracuse, was the head coach of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 U.S. Olympic boxing teams, and his boxers won 14 gold medals despite the fact his 1980 team did not compete at the Moscow Olympics because of a U.S. boycott.

Nappi coached Army boxing teams for most of his coaching career. In his first Olympic assignment, in 1976, he coached a team at Montreal that was led by gold medalists Sugar Ray Leonard, Leon and Michael Spinks, Howard Davis and Leo Randolph.

At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, a record nine U.S. boxers won gold medals, including future pro champions Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor, Mark Breland and Frank Tate.

As an Army coach, in the 1950s, he discovered and developed a Puerto Rican middleweight named Jose Torres. Later, Torres won a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics and went on to become a light-heavyweight world champion.

But Nappi was also a controversial figure in amateur boxing. He will be remembered for stormy feuds with amateur boxing executives and officials, pro boxing trainers and managers . . . and often his own boxers.

In fact, at one point during the peak of his career--at the Los Angeles Olympics, where his boxers were dominating--Nappi actually packed his bags and left for the airport. He was angry at the intrusion of pro trainers on his boxers’ training procedures during the Games.

Last summer, after he had retired from coaching, a move was under way to appoint him as an “adviser” to U.S. head Coach Joe Byrd, a move that was resisted by Byrd and his staff. At the time, Nappi carried the title of national coach for USA Boxing.

But when the organization’s board voted not to appoint Nappi to the post, he resigned, railing to the end over “politicians in amateur boxing.”

“If they don’t feel I can help those kids, then that’s it for me,” he said last July at the Olympic team boxoffs in Phoenix.

Nappi believed amateur boxers preparing for major competitions should have minimal sparring in training, and while he always seemed to get his way, it wasn’t without argument from his boxers.

Another continuing source of friction was Nappi’s refusal to allow boxers’ local coaches to work with them at training camps for major international competitions.

Said Oscar De La Hoya, last summer’s only U.S. gold medalist, during the team selection process: “All the boxers like Pat, but he doesn’t like us having our local coaches around. So we hope he won’t have any kind of input.”

He didn’t. Nappi resigned from USA Boxing at the Phoenix boxoffs.

Nappi, an Army master sergeant when he retired from the military in 1962, will be buried Thursday at the U.S. Military Academy cemetery at West Point, N.Y.