I’ve long been fascinated by the story of Mary Peters, Northern Ireland’s 1972 Olympic gold medalist. My ‘Thought for the Day’ on BBC Radio Ulster reflects on her remarkable athletics journey, through the Troubles and beyond.
(The photo is from July 5, 2009, when I won a 10k in Belfast marking Mary’s 70th birthday … Tomorrow Mary Peters celebrates her 82nd birthday.)
You can listen here, or read the text below:
Our Mary
In 1951, a 12-year-old girl from Liverpool attended school for the first time in her new hometown of Ballymena. She was so bewildered by the accents of her classmates that for some time, she required an interpreter for her lessons.
Two decades later, that same schoolgirl rose at dawn on a misty morning in Munich. It was the summer of 1972, and Mary Peters was leading the Olympic pentathlon. The final two events were that day. In her memoir, Mary described her sleepless night:
It had to be gold or nothing. … Above all I wanted it for the people back home. … [in] Belfast and Northern Ireland where it was long overdue for something good to happen. “Mary P”, I said, “… you can’t let those people down.”
Mary Peters didn’t let us down. By the end of the day, she had that Olympic gold and a new world record.
Like Mary Peters, I wasn’t born in Northern Ireland. When I learned about her, what amazed me was that at the height of the Troubles, she chose to stay. Her family had already emigrated to Australia. She could have easily moved to Britain, escaping the daily grind of the Troubles and gaining access to modern athletics facilities. Mary Peters trained for Munich on a crumbling track which was so badly in need of repair that it could no longer host competitions.
While Mary was still celebrating her gold medal, word filtered through that there had been a threat on her life, and she should not go back to Belfast. Her father told her never to return. But Mary said, “Of course I’m going back to Belfast.”
One night a few months later, Mary looked out the window of her Belfast home. A solider was crumpled on the pathway, bleeding. Three other soldiers lay dead inside the house next door. Those killings inspired Mary to fund raise to build a new athletics track for the youth of Belfast.
On a recent sunny afternoon, I snapped a photograph of my son posing with the statue that now overlooks that track: it depicts Mary Peters with her arms raised in victory on the medal stand in Munich. I sent the snapshot to my family in America.
“Who’s the woman with the medal?” my sister asked. In Northern Ireland we don’t need to ask that question. “That’s our Mary”, I thought, before making my reply.