Mary Rand, who became the first British woman to win Olympic athletics gold when she broke the world record in the long jump at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, has died aged 86.
Born in Somerset in February 1940, Rand was the only British female athlete to win three medals at a Games until the track cyclist Emma Finucane repeated the feat in Paris two years ago.
Rand was a special talent, claiming a silver medal in the multi-event pentathlon before becoming a member of the British quartet that took bronze in the sprint relay.
Rand in 2012Getty images
At 16 she had been offered an athletics scholarship at Millfield School, setting a British record in the pentathlon a year later. Still only 18, she then followed that with a silver medal in the long jump at the 1958 Commonwealth Games.
The 1960 Olympics in Rome proved a huge disappointment. Having jumped far enough — 6.33 metres — in qualifying to secure a silver medal, she slipped to ninth in the final after fouling two of her three attempts.
She responded with a bronze medal at the European Championships in 1962 but by Tokyo, at 24, Rand was in the shape of her life.
Victory was no easy task. Against her was the world record holder and European champion, Tatyana Schelkanova, of the USSR, and Poland’s Irena Kirszenstein.
Rand won three medals in Tokyo in 1964Alamy
Rand set an Olympic record of 6.52m in qualifying and then a new British record of 6.59m with her opening jump in the final, but then bettered that on three more occasions, with her fifth-round jump of 6.76m a world record and comfortably eclipsing Kirszenstein’s silver-medal performance of 6.60m. What made it all the more impressive was that Rand secured gold on a wet runway into a 1.6m/s headwind.
Rand was beaten to gold in the pentathlon by the USSR’s Irina Press, an athlete whose biological sex was called into question and someone whose retirement from athletics in 1966 coincided with the introduction of gender verification testing at the European Championships.
In Tokyo, Rand roomed with Ann Packer, who followed her six days later by winning gold in the 800m. Packer described Rand as “the most gifted athlete I ever saw”.
Rand received an OBE in the 1965 new year honours and was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 1964.
She was married three times, first to Sid Rand in 1961 and then to Bill Toomey, an American who won decathlon gold at the 1968 Olympics. Rand had three children, raising them in the US. She later married John Reese, and continued to live in California.