Mary Rand: Somerset Olympian

With the 2020 Summer Olympics due to be held in Tokyo, we recall one of the stars of the last Olympics to be held in the Japanese capital, in 1964 – Somerset’s own Mary Rand.

Mary Denise Bignal was born in Wells on 10 February 1940. In her early years she ran, as the only girl, with a local gang of children, and developed her athletic skills. “Anything that could be climbed, or jumped, or balanced on, or jumped from, I just couldn’t resist,” she later recalled. “The low wall around Wells Cathedral, which tapered to a fine ridge, it was like walking a tight-rope … the dustbins all the way down the main road to school, they all had to be jumped, non-stop.”

In the school holidays she helped her father in his chimney-sweeping and window-cleaning business all around Somerset. This meant visiting some grand houses, quite an experience for a child from a council house.

She didn’t really enjoy her Wells junior school, but at her secondary school in Street, she began more organised athletics training, especially the high jump, long jump and hurdling, as well as hockey. She assumed she would end up working for one of the main local employers, like Morlands or Clarks, but luckily for her, her athletic potential was spotted by Millfield, another school in Street, which she described as “a sort of greenhouse for top-class people, rich and titled and brilliant young people.”

Her athletic career blossomed during her three years there, both in schools competitions and in wider national and international meetings. Thereafter, an early highlight was her long jump silver medal at the 1958 Empire & Commonwealth Games in Cardiff. However her appearance at the 1960 Rome Olympics was disappointing. Despite being a favourite for the long jump, and setting a personal best in the qualifying, she only finished 9^th in the final, and also was 4^th in the 80 metres hurdles. The British team generally performed poorly in Rome, and were pilloried by the press, so much so that she thought of giving up athletics.

Redemption came for Rand (she had married Olympic rower, Sidney Rand, in 1961) with the Tokyo Olympic four years later. She won silver in the pentathlon (winning 3 of the 5 disciplines), and bronze in the 4x100m relay, but her crowning glory came in the long jump. After leading qualifying with a new Olympic record, she won the final on 14 October with a world-record jump of 6.76m (22’ 2¼”) on her 5^th jump, becoming the first woman to win an Olympics athletics gold medal.

She returned to Britain to a hero’s welcome, including lunch at Buckingham Palace and, on Saturday 14 November, a victory parade in Wells, with her in a yellow Rolls Royce from her childhood home, 10 Hervey Road, to the city centre, where the shop windows were decorated with welcome messages, and the town band playing. Despite torrential rain it was a triumphant day, summed up by a banner outside the Town Hall: “Well done Mary. We be turrible proud of ‘ee”.

Rand won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1964, and was made an MBE the following year. She was offered all sorts of commercial opportunities (which would have ended her amateur status in the sport), including even playing a female James Bond character in films!

Always modest, she recounted how she once returned to Wells to visit her family for the weekend and was embarrassed when her father took her to the pub and proudly introduced her to the patrons at the next table.

However, she loved visiting her home town, even after she emigrated to the USA, where she still lives. There is a commemorative plaque and actual size marker in Wells Market Place, unveiled in May 1967, recording her world-record leap, and in 2012 she was granted the freedom of the city, and loaned her 3 Tokyo medals for a display at Millfield. In a 2019 Western Daily Press interview she reminisced about Wells: “When I went back there on several occasions, I never realised how lucky I was.”