Mary Peters (athlete)
Olympic medal record | ||
---|---|---|
Women's Athletics | ||
![]() |
1972 Munich | Pentathlon |
Dame Mary Peters (born July 6, 1939) is a former British athlete, competing mainly in the pentathlon and shot put.
Peters was born in Halewood,Lancashire but moved to Ballymena at age eleven. She now lives near Belfast.[citation needed]
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.
As for her Olympic Games pentathlon record, after finishing 4th in 1964 and 9th in 1968, came the crowning moment of her long career. In the 1972 Summer Olympics she won the gold medal, narrowly beating the local favourite, Heide Rosendahl.
She was made an MBE in 1973, a CBE in 1990, and a DBE in 2000, the year in which Denise Lewis won gold in the women's multi-discipline event, now the heptathlon.
External links
- 1939 births
- Living people
- Athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics
- BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
- Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- English athletes
- Pentathletes
- People from Belfast
- Olympic gold medalists for Great Britain
- Olympic athletes of Great Britain
- British athletics biography stubs