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Mary Rand, the British track and field athlete who blazed a trail for women by winning three Olympic medals at the Tokyo Games in 1964, has died at the age of 86.
Rand was one of the giants of her sport: the epitome of speed, power and grace. Her long jump victory in Tokyo made her Britain’s first female Olympic gold medallist in athletics, and she followed it up with a silver in the pentathlon and a bronze in the 4x100m relay.
That supreme talent was also fused with 60s style. She was famously called “Marilyn Monroe on spikes” by one journalist, because of her blonde highlights, while Mick Jagger declared her to be his dream date.
After Rand’s death was announced, the tributes were led by Mary Peters, one of her four roommates in Tokyo and a pentathlon gold medallist at the 1972 Games, who told the Guardian: “She was the golden girl of her era and the most gifted athlete I ever saw.
“She worked hard and played hard, and she was a very talented all-around athlete. She could swim, she could she could play netball, she was a hockey player. And if you put her on the trampoline she would do front and back flips.
“I even went with her to dart tournaments once at Crystal Palace, and whoever threw the first bullseye won a free set of golden darts. Naturally she got a bullseye with her first dart.”
But it is was a long jump performance on a rainy day in Tokyo that earned Rand her place in history. The gold medal that changed her life, she revealed to the Guardian’s John Rodda, came following a lunch of chicken, cake and Ovaltine.
Perhaps someone had hidden rocket fuel in Rand’s drink too. Because despite jumping into a -1.6m headwind on a sodden tinder track, she broke the world record with a leap of 6.76m. To put that distance into context, it was only four centimetres shy of the distance required for bronze at the 2026 World Indoor Championships.
Rand might well have won a second gold in the pentathlon, but in the shot put she was more than six metres behind the Soviet athlete Irina Press, whose gender was the subject of much speculation and who stopped competing in 1966 after chromosome testing was introduced.
A third medal followed for Rand in the 4x100m relay but her work in Tokyo did not end on the track. She was 24 at the time, and had a young daughter, and she would sing her three young roommates, including Peters and the 800m Olympic champion, Ann Packer, to sleep.
“There were four of us in the room, and we were all competing on different days, and all nervous and apprehensive,” said Peters. “And so Mary used to sing lullabies to us that she sang to her daughter, Alison, and that’s how we got to sleep at night before our competition.”
Rand’s performances in Tokyo were ahead of their time. But, unfortunately for Rand’s financial situation, she was an athlete of her time. It meant that she was unable to earn money from competing and before Tokyo she got by on £10 a week working in the postal department of the Guinness factory – where she got a free daily lunch and pint and was able to ride around London on a Lambretta.
January 1966. Photograph: ANL/Shutterstock
There were plenty of offers after the Olympics. Indeed, she was even invited to the Cannes Film Festival, where she was approached about starring in a series of “woman James Bond” films. She turned the producers down, however, as she wanted to focus on track and field.
However, just before the Mexico Olympics in 1968 she tore an achilles tendon and was forced to retire, aged 28.
But it turned out to be some career for the girl who was born Mary Bignal in Wells, Somerset in 1940 and grew up in a council house, with her father a chimney sweeper and window cleaner and her mother a nurse.
Having shown athletic prowess from an early age she was given a sports scholarship at Millfield School and quickly progressed up the ranks.
By the time she arrived at her first Olympics in Rome in 1960, aged 20, she was among the favourites for gold. But she could only finish ninth after fouling on her first two jumps in the final.
She was to make amends in Tokyo. And when Ann Packer, who was also her roommate along with Peters, was asked about Rand she could not have been more effusive.
“Mary was the most gifted athlete I ever saw,” she said. “She was as good as athletes get; there has never been anything like her since. And I don’t believe there ever will be.”
In 1969 Rand moved to the United States with her second husband, Bill Toomey, the Olympic decathlon champion. It meant that she was out of sight – and too often out of mind – for the next 57 years.
But her momentous contribution to British sport is immense and undeniable.
