Within a week of being appointed by the Government to the RTE Authority, the 1972 Olympic pentathlon champion, Mary Peters, was made a Dame of the British Empire. The latter honour appears to have been more of a surprise than the call from Dublin.
Asked about her appointment to the State broadcaster's authority last month, Peters replies: "Well, I live on the island of Ireland; I'm a woman, an Ulster woman, a sports woman and a business woman," and she gestures as if to say, "why not?" The new authority was announced weeks before the Sydney Games, so who could be more ideal than a former Olympic champion? Although she admits she doesn't receive RTE at her Lisburn home, and is "not a great TV watcher", she was on the BBC Broadcasting Council for Northern Ireland for two years from 1982, has made many TV appearances, and has done a great deal of sports commentary on both radio and television.
Two days in Munich 28 years ago, which resulted in an Olympic gold medal and a world record, changed her life. Not least they helped her achieve a number of projects, including raising the money to resurface the old Queen's University athletics track (later re-named after her) to make it the first tartan track in Northern Ireland. One of her current projects is raising money to assist a school for coloured children, "not blacks, not whites" in Paarl, near Stellenbosch in South Africa".
She will be 61 next Thursday and continues to work for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board as well as being active on the after-dinner speech circuit. But above all, she represents the honourable face of sport.
In 1984, on the eve of the Los Angeles Olympics, I interviewed Peters, then the British women's team manager, for the British specialist magazine Athletics Weekly. At that time her event, the five-event pentathlon, was about to about to be extended to the heptathlon at the Olympics, with the introduction of the javelin and 800 metres. She was managing her own gym then, the Mary Peters Health Club in Lisburn, and that afternoon she was wearing her working clothes, a track suit. At 45 she retained her famous girlish awkwardness and the lop-sided smile. Recalling the emotion of winning in Munich, she seemed as excited as if it had happened only a week earlier. As she talked, a British soldier patrolled the street outside, machine gun at the ready.
Sixteen years on, Northern Ireland is very different. There is less tension, and an atmosphere of wary hope prevails, at least most of the time. Peters is more poised, less exuberant, extremely practical and apolitical. Living in order and apparent calm, she has acquired gravitas and presence, appearing more shrewd.
The cottage in which she has lived for 25 years is extremely feminine and currently full of bouquets, many sent by former athletes, honouring her becoming a dame. The garden is pretty, and she has a fascinating collection of athletics memorabilia which she wants to donate to a sports museum she is hoping to see opened in Belfast. Among the many portraits and photographs of her is a large painting by Raymond Piper which features Peters sitting in her team strip, barefoot, her running shoes on the bank beside her. The gold medal hangs from her fingers into a pile of leaves; the Mary Peters track is in the background.
The last time I interviewed her, there was no chance of seeing the medal as it is kept in a bank. Is it still there? "Yes, but you're in luck; it's here today. I needed it for something we're doing, but it's going back tomorrow." Holding an Olympic gold medal in your hands, even if you haven't won it, is very exciting. There is an aura about an Olympic champion. Is she aware of this? Peters looks thoughtful and says with commendable understatement: "It's very nice."
Dressed in green for a party, she looks very well. She still works out on a machine but stopped running soon after she retired from competition in 1974. Just over five foot eight inches, she was never an amazon but looked bigger because she was a power athlete. Often wrongly dismissed as a shot putter who also competed in pentathlons, she developed into a fine sprint hurdler and high jumper. She also worked full-time, and received no sponsorship, although she has had a sponsored car for the past five years.
It should be said that Britain's current hepathalon star, Denise Lewis, who is a professional athlete, has only recently run as fast as Peters did 28 years ago over the hurdles. "She has only just equalled my high jump, and her 200 metres is about the same as mine was."
Mary Peters, better known as Mary P, was always an athlete's athlete, which explains why she was so successful both as British women's team captain and later as British women's team manager. As she says: "It helps when you have done it yourself." She does fear for athletes. "The media put them under such pressure, always looking for some `other type' of story. When I was competing we travelled with journalists who knew the sport and were interested in it. They were friends. It's all very different now. Look at Sonia O'Sullivan and that priest making those comments. I think she's great." Will she win in Sydney? "Oh I'm sure she wants to, but so will another 50. It's very hard to win a gold medal."
Having run the health club for two decades, the final five years on her own after the death of her friend and business partner, former Ireland rugby captain Deryck Monteith, she sold the club three years ago. It is now called The Olympian, no prizes for guessing after whom. Her reasons for parting company with it were practical: "The club was my life from nine in the morning until nine at night. I had no social life; the club was my life."
Whatever about the demands of the health cub, sport has been her life for a long time. Her all-round ability at sports was first noticed by a teacher when she was still a child. "I always enjoyed sport, whether it was running, jumping or throwing."
When Peters was 16 her mother died of cancer. "It was very traumatic. My father remarried within six months. That was difficult . . . I got on very well with my stepmother, but it was still difficult." For a person who has always had a reputation for being friendly and chatty, Peters is quite reserved in an interview situation and conveys more with a few words than others would say in lengthier speeches.
What does come across within moments of her beginning to speak about her athletics career is a daunting determination and toughness. "Oh yes," she says, "there was a steel there, there has to be. It is not easy winning a gold medal and it is the one that matters. No one remembers who won the silver medals."
Whenever she has been asked about her nationality she has always replied: "I am an Ulster-woman." At the Commonwealth Games she always represented Northern Ireland but at Olympic and European level she competed for Great Britain. There is no mystery in this. Peters is English by birth and was born in Halewood, Lancashire on July 6th, 1939. She and her brother, three years her senior, arrived in Belfast with their parents when their insurance broker father was transferred there in 1950. She was then 11 and already interested in sport. "My father always encouraged my brother and myself."
In 1956 she competed in her first pentathlon, finishing third behind high-jumper Thelma Hopkins and sprinter Maeve Kyle - whose husband Sean had introduced the event to Northern Ireland and coached Peters. Two years later, she was selected to represent Northern Ireland at the Empire Games (later renamed the Commonwealth Games) in Cardiff. She made her British team debut in 1961 in the shot, and the following year was fifth in the pentathlon at the European Championships in Belgrade.
The Tokyo Games in 1964 marked the inclusion for the first time of the pentathlon in the Olympic programme. Peters was selected for Great Britain, but so was Mary Rand, who would win the gold medal in the long jump. Rand was the glamour girl of British sport, and she finished second in the pentathlon, ahead of Peters, who was fourth. "Mary Rand was the most naturally talented athlete I ever competed against," she comments. There is no doubt that Rand overshadowed Peters, who returned home to prepare for the Commonwealth Games due to take place in Kingston Jamaica in 1966. There was no pentathlon, so Peters concentrated on the shot and started to "bulk up". Disappointed with her silver medal, worse was to come later that year in the European Championships in Budapest, where she was unplaced. But she persisted and was selected for the pentathlon at the Mexico Olympics in 1968. It proved another setback; an ankle injury affected her performance, and she was placed ninth.
Then aged 29, Peters might have bowed out. Instead she took the 1969 season off and prepared for the Commonwealth Games of 1970. At Edinburgh, she won both the pentathlon and shot for Northern Ireland. Her pentathlon score re-established her among the world's best after a six-year absence. The entire pre-Olympic year was devoted to training and also transforming herself as a high-jumper by adopting Dick Fosbury's "flop" technique. Throughout the winter of 1971-72 she approached world class as a Fosbury-flopper.
Arriving at Munich in 1972 ranked fifth in the world, Peters was regarded as the favourite. Aware the strongest threat came from the gifted West German Heidi Rosendahl - already the long-jump gold medallist and a world-class sprinter with the advantage of competing before her home crowd - Peters was also worried about the reigning European champion, East German Burglinde Pollak. "I didn't even know what she looked like. But I had to see her so I went all over the village. I went back to Buster [McShane, her coach] and said, `I can't find Pollak'. Later we went over to the warm-up area and the three East Germans were sitting on the high-jump pit . . . She was a big girl, about five foot ten, but there was a softness about her face; I didn't feel she wanted to win as much as I did. I wasn't worried about her anymore."
The three events on the first day were Peters's strongest, and she did well, running 13.3 seconds for the 100 metres hurdles, putting the shot 16.20 metres and, after a shaky opening, went on to head the highjump pool with a lifetime's best clearance of 1.82 metres (or five foot eleven-and-half, narrowly missing six foot one). Was she ever afraid of the high-jump? "No I loved it. It was like soaring." Day one ended with Peters leading but aware that Rosendahl was capable of long-jumping and sprinting well enough on the second day to snatch the gold. "I didn't sleep that night; I couldn't." Rosendahl's long jump was a mighty 6.83 metres, just short of her own world record. Peters jumped 5.98 metres, or just under 20 feet. Waiting for the 200 metres was agony. "People kept telling me not to worry, as I'd won a medal. But I kept saying `any medal is no good, it's got to be the gold'. I knew it was my last chance. I was 33."
That 200 metres remains one of sport's enduring images. The West German, wearing her trademark red-and-white striped socks, blasted round the bend into the straight recording 22.96 seconds, her fastest ever. Ten metres behind, Peters of the short pattering stride hung on to run 24.08 seconds. Peters won the title by 10 points. Peters has remained in touch with Rosendahl. The Munich Games remain tarnished by the massacre of the Israeli athletes. Peters points out it happened after her event. "I would not have been able to compete had it happened earlier. I knew Esther Roht the hurdler; her coach was killed."
Athletics and sport have changed, Peters agrees, but she stresses that "society has changed". She believes the Olympics will survive. "People still want to see the best athletes in the world complete." In her day, women's athletics were more threatened by competitors of dubious sex than by drugs. Asked about Michelle Smith, she shrugs and says: "It's such a shame. She could have done so much for women's sport." As for the money in sport she says: "I don't begrudge the athletes their money. I just wish they didn't get quite so much so there would be more for those coming up."
Peters never made political pronouncements. She hasn't changed. "For the past 28 years I've tried to help through sport, and I have and do and will continue. I've lived here for 50 years and it's a wonderful place. I've praised the Glens and the Antrim Coast Road wherever I've been, all over the world."
