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Tokyo 1964, with its so distinctive BBC theme tune is the first Olympics I can remember with Gold Medals for athletes Ann Packer and Nant Y Moel’s Lyn Davies. I was only eight at the time, so it was all about the sport for me, it would take me a year or two to realise that there may have been other reasons for watching the third athlete British athlete to win gold. Mary Rand made it a British long gold double and was forever known as a “Golden Girl” after that. I hesitate to use the term, but she was the first British female sporting “sex symbol” of my lifetime, but, as I say, I was too young to realise what all the fuss was about!
Four years later however, it was different at Mexico 1968 there was to be Lilian Board who I watched for more than sporting reasons! Tragically, cancer claimed Lilian at only 22 and now Mary Rand has passed away at 86. Her fellow gold medalist from sixty two years ago, Ann Packer has described her as the most talented athlete (besides her gold, she won a silver in the Pentathlon and a bronze in the four x 100 relay at the Tokyo games) sheÂ’d ever seen - what an epitaph that is.
RIP
Four years later however, it was different at Mexico 1968 there was to be Lilian Board who I watched for more than sporting reasons! Tragically, cancer claimed Lilian at only 22 and now Mary Rand has passed away at 86. Her fellow gold medalist from sixty two years ago, Ann Packer has described her as the most talented athlete (besides her gold, she won a silver in the Pentathlon and a bronze in the four x 100 relay at the Tokyo games) sheÂ’d ever seen - what an epitaph that is.
RIP
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