Mary Rand

Mary Denise Rand, MBE (née Bignal; born 10 February 1940) is a British former track and field athlete.

In 1956, she was a guest of the Olympic squad at a training camp in Brighton, where she beat Britain's best high jumpers.

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 beat the favourite, world record holder Tatyana Schelkanova of the USSR and Poland's Irena Kirszenstein.

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 Mexico City Olympics.

Due to injury, she failed to make the 1968 British Olympic team and retired in September that year.

She was succeeded as Golden Girl of British athletics by her friend and London Olympiades club-mate, Lillian Board.

In December 1969, she married her second husband, American Bill Toomey, the 1968 Olympics' decathlon champion.

Bignal with Eef Kamerbeek in 1960