Mary Rand obituary: The original golden girl of British athletics
Mary Rand, who has died at 86, was the original golden girl of British athletics.
The first British woman to win an Olympic track-and-field gold medal – in the long jump at Tokyo in 1964 – she had such an aura that Mick Jagger wanted to date her.
But above all, Rand was a pioneer for women in sport.
She was born in Wells, Somerset, on February 10, 1940, to parents Eric and Hilda Bignal and attended Millfield School on a sports scholarship. But she was eventually expelled after going to Paris with her then-boyfriend Thiti Burakamkovit and becoming engaged, something the school was against.
An exceptional young athlete, Rand – whose earliest memories of running were around an orchard in Wells – was a guest of the Olympic squad at a training camp in Brighton in 1956, where she beat Britain’s best high jumpers.
She also set a UK record of 4,466 points when she finished seventh in the pentathlon at the European Championships in 1958 aged only 18.
It was just a hint of what she would achieve as, two years later, she went to the Olympic Games in Rome expected to win the long jump.
She led the qualifiers and had been unbeaten for two years, but nerves ruined her chances in the final.
Her qualifying jump, which was a British record, would have given her silver but she finished ninth – and returned home to newspaper headlines of ‘Flop, flop, flop’.
A year later she met Commonwealth silver-medal sculler and Great Britain Olympian Sydney Rand – and within three days they were engaged, tying the knot within five weeks.
It dashed the hopes of the Rolling Stones frontman, who was an admirer.
“I was at the BBC one day and the Beatles were there. I met two of them, Ringo (Starr) and George (Harrison) I think,” Rand recalled in a 2023 interview.
“And then Mick Jagger, I never actually met him, but they asked him if he could go on a date with anybody and he said it would be me. I don’t know if that was good or bad, but anyway that’s what he said!”
Her relationship with Sydney lasted five years and the couple had a daughter, Alison.
She returned to the Olympics in Tokyo a wife and mother, but in 1964, aged 24, Rand made British athletics history.
Rand broke the national and Olympic records with her first attempt, 6.59 metres, improved on them and with her fifth jump smashed the world record after a leap of 6.76m – despite a headwind of 1.6 metres per second and a rain-soaked track.
It lasted four years as a world best and no British woman has held the record since.
Not content with that, Rand also won silver in the inaugural women’s pentathlon and bronze as a member of the 4x100m team in Japan – becoming the first British woman to win three medals at a single Olympic Games.
Success all came while she was still working part-time in the postal office at a Guinness factory in London.
“In the Sixties we had to be amateurs,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to earn money from athletics or get sponsorship.
"People are always surprised when I tell them I have had to work my entire life. I was working at the postal office in a Guinness factory in London when I was in the Olympics.
"I had to have a job that allowed me to take the time off to travel and they were very good and paid me even when I was away.
“One of the benefits I got there was a free Guinness in the work’s canteen at lunchtime. I jokingly told a reporter I had a half-pint every day as part of my training routine.
“The next thing I knew there were headlines about my drinking and I got a long lecture from my coach about putting on weight.
“Nowadays my comments would have been enough to get me a Guinness sponsorship. But I remember being told off. The only freebie I got were occasional haircuts at Vidal Sassoon’s salon.”
Despite lacking the glamour and trappings athletes enjoy now she was called ‘Marilyn Monroe on spikes’ by former national athletics coach Tom McNab and Japan was the peak of her career.
She was named the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 1964 and also made an MBE in the 1965 New Year Honours.
Rand went on to win long jump gold at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Jamaica, but injury ended her Olympic title defence and she failed to make the squad in 1968.
She retired in September of that year, aged just 28.
In 1969, she married her second husband, American Bill Toomey, the 1968 Olympic decathlon champion, and moved to the United States.
They were together 22 years, having two daughters, Samantha and Sarah. She later married John Reese, living in Atascadero, California before his death, and later moved to Reno, Nevada.