Still Smiling

Peter Robertson speaks to Olympic pentathlete Lady Mary Peters

- Peter Robertson

In 1972, Mary Peters gained sporting immortality by winning the gold medal for Great Britain in the pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Munich. She also represented Northern Ireland at every Commonwealth Games from 1958 until 1974.

Appointed MBE in the 1973 New Year Honours and promoted to CBE in the 1990 Birthday Honours, she was made a dame in the 2000 Birthday Honours. In 2015, she was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, became Dame of the Order of Saint John in 2017, and Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter in 2019. However, Lady Peters is equally as proud of the fact that 50 years ago she established a charitable sports trust, now known as The Mary Peters Trust, to support talented young sportsmen and women, both able-bodied and disabled, from across Northern Ireland, in a financial and advisory capacity. Beneficiaries have included golfer Rory McIlroy and boxer Carl Frampton.

“I am thrilled that my trust has now been helping young sports people for five decades. It’s stronger than ever and we are helping even more athletes to realise their sporting dreams,” says proud Mary. “My life would have been amazingly different, and I would not be remembered now had I not won gold. Princess Anne, who is patron of my trust, won the Sports Personality of the Year award in 1971, and the next year, when she presented it to me, I turned to the TV camera and said: ‘Hasn’t she kept it clean!’”

Mary Elizabeth Peters was born on 6 July 1939 in Halewood, near Liverpool. Her mother, Hilda, was a housewife, and her father, Arthur Peters, was a leading violinist in the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and an insurance agent with the Liverpool Victoria Society. When Mary was 11, the family moved to Ballymena and then Belfast when Arthur's job was relocated to Northern Ireland.