Mary Rand, widely regarded as Britain\u2019s greatest ever female athlete, was born and brought up in Somerset, writes Phil Hill.<\/p>\n
Ms Rand, who has died aged 86, became the first British woman to win three medals at an Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
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After smashing the world record to take gold in the long jump at Tokyo in 1964, she then won silver in the pentathlon and bronze in the 4X100m relay.<\/p>\n
That year, she was BBC Sports Personality of the Year and was awarded the MBE in the 1965 New Year Honours.<\/p>\n
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She was born Mary Bignal in 1940 and spent her early years in Wells, the city of her birth, where her mother was a nurse and her father a chimney sweep and window cleaner.<\/p>\n
Her earliest memories of running were around an orchard in Wells.<\/p>\n
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At the age of 16, she won a sports scholarship to Millfield School, by which time she outperformed the country\u2019s top high jumpers at an Olympics squad training camp.<\/p>\n
Despite excelling at all sports and winning national school titles, she was expelled from Millfield.<\/p>\n
The school\u2019s founder and Somerset County cricketer RJO \u2018Jack\u2019 Meyer frowned on her decision to travel with a former pupil to Paris, where the couple became engaged.<\/p>\n
Ms Rand, who had won long jump silver at the 1958 Commonwealth Games and competed at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, later married British rower Sidney Rand.<\/p>\n
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She won long jump bronze at the European Championships in 1962, four months after giving birth to the couple\u2019s daughter, Alison.<\/p>\n
Following her triple Olympic triumph in 1964, she won long jump gold at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Jamaica.<\/p>\n
But her career was ended by a leg injury aged 28, leading to her missing Olympic selection in 1968.<\/p>\n
Ms Rand married twice more, firstly to USA decathlon Olympic champion Bill Toomey, with whom she had two more daughters, Samantha and Sarah, and secondly to John Reese.<\/p>\n
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Following her athletics career, she lived in California and later Nevada.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for UK Athletics said it was \u201csaddened to hear of\u201d the death of Mary Rand, \u201cwho blazed a trail for women in the sport\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ann Packer, who roomed with Ms Rand at the 1964 Olympics, where she won the 800m, later said: \u201cMary was the most gifted athlete I ever saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was as good as athletes get.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has never been anything like her since and I don’t believe there ever will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mary Rand, widely regarded as Britain\u2019s greatest ever female athlete, was born and brought up in Somerset, writes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[990,13,986,987,989,988],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-1964-olympics","tag-britain","tag-mary-rand","tag-millfield-school","tag-ms-rand","tag-olympic-games"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}