Mary Rand

Mary Rand

Mary Rand in 1966
Personal information
Born	(1940-02-10) 10 February 1940 (age 77) Wells, UK
Height	1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Weight	61 kg (134 lb)
Sport
Sport	Sprint
Club	London Olympiades
Medal record Representing  Great Britain Olympic Games Tokyo 1964 Long jump Tokyo 1964 Pentathlon Tokyo 1964 4×100 m relay European Championships Belgrade 1962 Long jump Belgrade 1962 4×100 m relay Commonwealth Games Representing  England Kingston 1966 Long jump Cardiff 1958 Long jump

Mary Denise Rand, MBE (née Bignal on 10 February 1940) is a former English track and field athlete. She won the long jump at the 1964 Summer Olympics by breaking the world record, the first British female to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field. She remains the only Great Britain female athlete to win three medals in a single Games.

Mary Rand is the daughter of Eric and Hilda Bignal. She was born and grew up in Wells, Somerset, England. At 16, Millfield School offered her an athletics scholarship. She excelled in all sports and won All-England Schools' titles. She was outstanding at high jump, long jump and hurdles. In 1956, she was a guest of the Olympic squad at a training camp in Brighton, where she beat Britain's best high jumpers.

At 17, Rand set a British record of 4046 points in the pentathlon. She won a silver medal in the 1958 Commonwealth Games long jump and came fifth in the high jump. One month later she came seventh in the European pentathlon championship.

In the 1960 Olympics in Rome, she set a British record of 6.33m in the qualifying round of the long jump, which if repeated, would have won a silver in the final. In the final she fouled two of the three jumps and finished ninth. She also finished fourth in the 80m hurdles. She won a bronze medal in the European championship long jump in 1962.

At the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Rand set an Olympic record in the long jump in the qualifying rounds, jumping 6.52m. In the final she beat the favourite, world record holder Tatyana Schelkanova of the USSR and Poland's Irena Kirszenstein. Her first jump of 6.59m was a British record. However, in the fifth round, on a wet runway with a headwind of 1.6 metres a second, she broke the world record, leaping 6.76m to take gold. Her record lasted four years until it was broken at altitude by Viorica Viscopoleanu in the subsequent Olympics.

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