It started with a nail: Golden girl Dame Mary Peters reflects on 1972 Munich Olympics glory

She was 25 when she got her first taste of Olympic competition and her room-mates were to prove an effective catalyst in her gold medal success in Munich eight years later.

Mary explained: “I shared a room at Tokyo in the Olympics in 1964 with Mary Rand, Ann Packer and a girl called Pat Pryce (all English athletes). There were four of us to a room. Can you imagine that in this day and age? Having to go down the corridor to the bathroom.

“Mary ultimately won a gold, a silver and a bronze. Ann won a gold and a silver.

“I was fourth, but I always compare myself with them and say they were my inspiration.

“They hammered a nail into the bedroom wall so they had somewhere to hang their medals. I didn’t have that expectation.

“Eight years later it was my time.”

Mary finished fourth in the pentathlon in Tokyo and ninth in Mexico in 1968, which meant she went to Munich without being given much of a chance, but the odds didn’t bother her.

She said: “I went into 1972 knowing it was possible, I was confident, but of course when you go into a pentathlon you’ve five events so anything could go wrong.

“I was 33, I didn’t have a track to train on, it was full of potholes. I did most of my training at Queen’s University gym in the PEC. It wasn’t easy but I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship with Churchill College, that allowed me to go to America for six weeks to train in the July and August pre-Olympics.

“It was sunshine every day, every school and college out there has a synthetic track.

“I was able to train, but I was bored out of my mind, what do you do the rest of the day?

“I overtrained and strained my Achilles which was a problem, but Buster McShane who was my coach flew out and recognised that the shoes I was using were rubbing on the back of my Achilles. We threw those away and gave it a rest for a few days and then got training again.

“It just made the difference because of the sunshine and availability of surfaces that I could do my training on.

“I came home from Los Angeles and went to compete at the games in Edinburgh and jumped higher than I’d jumped before.

“I’d only learnt the Fosbury Flop exactly a year before my competition. Dick Fosbury had done it at the Mexico Olympics (where he won a gold medal), and everybody started doing it.

“Before that I had been using a very unusual donkey jump, it was supposed to be a Western roll but it was my interpretation. It was sideways.

“It suited me because I had very strong legs, I did a lot of weight training.”

Mary recalled her path to glory in Munich: “The first three events were my strongest – the hurdles, I broke the Olympic record, and then the shot put, very few people had put over 16 metres – I did.

“Then it was the high jump, everyone else was out at five foot eight I think.

“I jumped five foot 11 and a half. I’m only five foot eight tall.

“It was partly because of the crowd that stayed to see me compete, I’d never had a crowd like that before, and partly because I was jumping out of fear. I knew I needed the points because I wasn’t going to be good at the long jump and 200 metres.

“Heidi Rosenbaum had won the gold medal in the long jump so I knew that was her strong one. She was also in the German relay team so I knew she was a very fast runner.

“I had to accumulate enough in the first three to be ahead of her.”

She continued: “It was so tight, so close.

“There weren’t computers in those days so they were adding it up.

“I was waiting for my time to come up, it didn’t come up instantly.

“Because it was so close and because there was a German involved they had to be very accurate. If they’d made a mistake and she’d beaten me it would have looked bad.

“When the time came up all the English speaking girls were surrounding me, they were joyous for me but I didn’t know how close the timings were to give the points.

“Heidi came and hugged me and that’s when I knew I’d beaten her. In the end I beat her by 10 points out of 4,800.”

First to win gold for her country

Mary Peters was the first athlete to win a gold medal at the summer Olympics for Northern Ireland.

At the Seoul Olympics in 1988 Jimmy Kirkwood and Stephen Martin came home with gold medals after the GB team won in the men’s hockey final.

Mary also has three Commonwealth gold medals – two from Edinburgh in 1970 (shot put and pentathlon) and one from Christchurch in 1974 (pentathlon).

Conflict at home and at Munich Games

Mary told how she tried to stay focused on her Olympic dream as the Troubles raged around her.

“There was nearly 500 people died in 1972”, she said.

“I lived on the Antrim Road. I had to get a bus into town and then a bus out to where the track is or to Queen’s PEC. It wasn’t easy because you had to carry your starting blocks and your shot put with you.

“Going into town on the bus, bombs would be going off, I kept going, I don’t know why but I didn’t anticipate any fear of anything happening to me. I had a mission and I was going to be there.

“I trained in Buster’s gym in Upper Arthur Street. I worked for Buster as well.

“I remember going to the gym one Sunday morning and the Abercorn disaster had happened. There were milk bottles on the window sills, I saw a soldier drinking from one of the milk bottles and I felt so sad when you think of the atrocity that had happened the day before.”

In the immediate aftermath of her Olympic triumph, the conflict at home reared its head again.

Mary recalled: “After I had won my medal a phone call came through to the BBC that if I came home I’d be shot and my flat would be bombed.”

The 1972 Olympics saw bloodshed when Israeli athletes were taken hostage and killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.

Mary said: “You’re a bit isolated when you’re in the Olympic village. We didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have English television or radio.

“The girl opposite my room knocked on my door, I was taking her out to buy a wedding present. We could see all the tanks surrounding the village but we didn’t know what was happening.

“We went out for the day and when I came back I met a Bulgarian lady in the lift going up to my room. I said ‘what happened’, she said ‘it’s okay, it’s all over’. It was only the next day I realised what had happened.”

Mary, who has since returned to pay her respects, said: “I wasn’t as aware at the time of what was happening with the invasion and I always felt guilty about it. That’s why I wanted to go back and pay my respects.”

Liverpool’s loss was Northern Ireland’s gain after dad’s move

It was thanks to her father that Mary came to represent Northern Ireland.

She recalled: “I was 11 when my father came here with work. We came over from Liverpool to Ballymena.

“I couldn’t understand a word anybody said. I had to have somebody sit beside me in school to interpret what the teacher was saying.”

After a time in Ballymena, the family settled in Portadown where Mary enjoyed a great sporting rivalry between her school Portadown College and neighbouring Lurgan College.

She said: “We played hockey against Lurgan and they were very strong. I’ve still the evidence on my shins.

“I played for the town team after I left school for a while. I was at college in Belfast and getting the train down on a Saturday was a bit of a chore. I was always first to arrive and last to leave.”

Mary was a home economics teacher at Graymount Primary School on Belfast’s Shore Road.

She said: “I had to give up teaching in 1964 when I was selected for the Olympics. The principal of the school was very keen for me to go but the director of education didn’t like me having time off.”

Mary now lives on the outskirts of Belfast not far from the track that bears her name, but not as close as some tour guides tell their passengers.

Mary said: “My father is dead a long time now. Whenever he came to see me he used to see the sign for the Mary Peters Track and laugh. He did the Belfast Bus Tour one day, while passing the track the guide on the bus was saying, ‘... and this is where Mary Peters lives’. My father said, ‘indeed she does not. I’m her father and I know she doesn’t live there’.”

When she was being interviewed after being presented with her gold medal in Munich, Mary got a pleasant surprise.

She said: “I was asked to go on television live on the BBC, Buster was with me. He said I’ve got a surprise for you and from behind the screen came my father. He’d been living in Australia with my brother.

“He had flown to Munich telling my brother, ‘I’m going to see Mary win the gold medal’. He had not any knowledge of how good I was. I’d no idea he was there, he’d been sitting there for two days as a spectator.

“When I won he went up to the BBC box and said, ‘I’m Mary Peters’ father’. He had to produce his passport to prove that he was. I can’t believe he did it.

“That was a distraction for me. I wanted to be with my father, I hadn’t seen him for a few years.

“He was the man who gave me so much encouragement when I was a schoolgirl. He’d built a high jump pit and a shot circle in the field behind the house.”