Athletics trailblazer and legend Mary Rand dies aged 86

UK Athletics is saddened to hear of the death of Olympic, European and Commonwealth champion Mary Rand, at the age of 86.

From a young age, Rand was a trailblazer.

She was just 17 when she set her first British record in the pentathlon, making her major championship debut a few weeks later, when she won long jump silver at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff.

Rand made her Olympic debut in Rome in 1960, setting a new British record. But it was four years later, in Tokyo, where she made history—becoming the first British woman to win three medals at a single Olympic Games. Having long been fascinated by Japan, she returned home weeks later with a complete medal haul, gold, silver and bronze.

She set an Olympic record in long jump qualifying and broke the world record in the final with a leap of 6.76m, taking the mark from favourite Tatyana Schelkanova.

Inspired by Rand’s opening-day gold—the first track and field gold won by a British female athlete—the squad went on to claim 12 medals in total. A few days later, she added silver in the pentathlon and bronze in the 4x400m relay.

“If you talk to Ann Packer, she will say, ‘Mary came back and she’d won a gold and it inspired everybody’. They all thought, ‘If Mary can do it, we can do it’,” Rand later recalled.

Rand was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1964 and was awarded an MBE in the 1965 New Year Honours List.

She became a genuine superstar. The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger famously declared Rand to be his ‘dream date’, though she insisted she was more of a Beatles fan.

Rand went on to win long jump gold at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston. Over the course of her career, she won 12 national titles across long jump, high jump, sprint hurdles and pentathlon.

She also held the world record in the triple jump from 1959 to 1981, though it was unofficial, as the women’s triple jump was not recognised by World Athletics until 1990.

“Mary was the most gifted athlete I ever saw,” said Packer, her roommate in Tokyo, where she won Olympic 800m gold. “She was as good as athletes get. There has never been anything like her since—and I don’t believe there ever will.”