(1939- )
Mary Peters Track, Upper Malone Road, Belfast BT9 5PR
In 1964 Mary finished 4th at the Olympics and secured 9th place in 1968. In the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Mary won the gold medal in the women’s pentathlon, narrowly beating the local favourite, West Germany’s Heidi Rosendahl by 10 points, setting a world record score.
After her victory, death threats were phoned into the televised channel (the BBC), but Peters insisted she would return home to Belfast*. She was greeted by fans and a band at the airport and paraded through the city streets but was not allowed back to her home for three months and, despite work offers worldwide, she insisted on remaining in Northern Ireland.
She represented Northern Ireland at every Commonwealth Games between 1958 and 1974. In these games she won 2 gold medals for the pentathlon, plus a gold and silver medal for the shot put.
In 1975 Mary 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. The trust has made a large number of awards and has a list of well-known alumni.
I visit Northern Ireland’s premier athletics track on the outskirts of Belfast which is named after her and duly take pictures of me standing beside her at the moment when her gold medal is awarded. I have a choice of 2nd and 3rd place as the number 1 spot is taken. Touchingly, the artist John Sherlock offered the sculpture as a gift to the city of Belfast, its people and the future generation of athletes training at the track.
*Known as, ‘The Troubles’, Northern Ireland lived with around 30 years of deep conflict between those wanting to be part of Great Britain and those who wanted to be part of Ireland, with the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic sectors.
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