Local athlete who was a pioneer for women in sport

MARY Rand, who has died at the age of 86, was the original golden girl of British athletics.

- PA SPORT STAFF

Mary Rand pictured at the London Olympiades Athletic Club

(Evening Standard/Getty Images)

She was the first British woman to win an Olympic track-and-field gold medal - in the long jump at Tokyo in 1964 and such was her aura, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger wanted to date her.

Above all, though, Rand was a pioneer for women in sport.

She was born in Wells 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'.