Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was the first 100m sprinter to win individual medals in four consecutive Olympic Games; Fraser-Pryce is the oldest woman to win the 100m world title after taking gold in Eugene in 2022 at the age of 35
Last Updated: 09/02/24 11:19am
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has revealed her plans to retire after the Olympics
Three-time Olympic champion sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will retire after the 2024 Paris Olympics, saying she owes it to her family.
Fraser-Pryce was the first 100m sprinter to win individual medals in four consecutive Olympic Games. The Jamaican began her journey in Beijing 2008, which saw her become the first Caribbean woman to win gold in the women’s 100m.
She held on to her 100m title in London 2012, joining a select few to have done so. Despite battling a toe injury, she won bronze in 2016 Rio Olympics and a silver in relay.
After giving birth in 2017, she won another Olympic silver and a relay gold in Tokyo 2020.
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“My son needs me, my husband and I have been together since before I won in 2008. He has sacrificed for me,” 37-year-old Fraser-Pryce told Essence.com.
“We’re a partnership, a team, and it’s because of that support that I’m able to do the things that I have been doing for all these years,” she added. “I think I now owe it to them to do something else.”
Currently, she is focused on preparing for Paris, which takes place from July 26 to August 11 and something she views as an opportunity to push boundaries.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will feature in the Paris Olympics this summer
It is about “showing people that you stop when you decide. I want to finish on my own terms,” she said.
In 2019, she became the oldest woman to claim the 100m World Championship title in Doha. She further solidified this achievement by winning the title again at the age of 35 in Eugene in 2022, 14 years after her initial Olympic gold triumph.
“It’s not enough that we step on a track and we win medals. You have to think about the next generation that’s coming after you, and give them the opportunity to also dream – and dream big,” Fraser-Pryce added.
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Mary Rand, 83, spoke to Sky Sports News from her home in Nevada about her memories and her historic achievements from the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo
Mary Rand, 83, spoke to Sky Sports News from her home in Nevada about her memories and her historic achievements from the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo
Mary Rand was once the golden girl of British athletics, winner of the first track and field gold medal by a British female athlete at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and still the only woman to win three track and field medals at the same Olympic Games.
Mary took top spot in the long jump with a world-record leap of 6.76m, then landed pentathlon silver and 4x100m relay bronze.
Almost 60 years later we tracked down the former darling of British athletics, to her home in Reno Nevada to get her thoughts and memories of those historic games. Now aged 83, Mary told us about how it all started for her in athletics.
“I was always a tomboy,” Mary tells Sky Sports.
“I always followed my brothers, and I think started out running around an orchard in Wells, Somerset. I eventually went to the All England Schools, that’s as far as you can go. I got a scholarship to Millfield and when I went there I had a coach, and the rest is history.”
Mary’s passion and natural ability for athletics is clear, and looking back on her achievement of becoming the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal, she modestly says: “I was doing something I really loved to do and I was fortunate enough to meet really good people along the way who really helped me. When I won I couldn’t quite believe it really because at that point I had a daughter that was two years old.”
Rand came away from Tokyo with three Olympic medals
Things, however, were not that simple for the Somerset native. At the 1960 Games in Rome four years earlier, a disappointing Olympics saw her return to England to newspaper headlines which read ‘Flop, flop, flop’.
Not discouraged by those past headlines, Mary, then 24 and a mother to two-year-old daughter Alison, was determined to put it right in Japan.
Mary recalls the day of her historic jump clearly.
“The morning that I was going to compete I was sharing a room with Anne Packer, Mary Peters and Pat Nutting and hailstones were coming down. I looked out and went, ‘oh my lord it’s hailing’, but then I thought to myself, ‘well, it’s the same for everybody, they’ve all got to compete in it’. I was very fortunate that I qualified with my first jump so I could go right back in and stay out of the rain.”
Rand tries on a pair of FCA (Cuban Athletics Federation) earrings in 1965
Fortunate with the weather maybe, but there was no fortune with her jumping in that final in Tokyo. Five of Mary’s six jumps broke the Olympic record but, as she recalls, records were the last thing on her mind.
“You don’t really think about anything except what you’re going to do. You’re hoping you’re going to run down the runway and hit that little board at the end and get a good jump,” she adds.
Well, Mary did that and more and no one in the stadium was more surprised that she broke the world record than she was.
“When I came back and I had jumped the world record, I couldn’t understand it because it was in metres and back then we didn’t do metres. When it went up on the board it said 6.76m and underneath it said ‘world record’.
“I was blown away,” Mary chuckles to herself at her recollection of the moment.
Gold in the long jump was to be the pinnacle of Mary’s achievements in Tokyo but she also ended up coming home with a silver in the pentathlon and a bronze in the 4x100m relay. Her medals are kept at her old school and that is where Mary thinks they belong.
“They’re at Millfield in Somerset, they got a big display case and it’s really nice. I think that’s where they belong because it is part of history and it might inspire young athletes when they see that to do better.”
Rand competing in the long jump at White City
Mary’s achievements are even more remarkable when put into context. There were no million-pound contracts, she did not have the carefully-selected diets and use of cutting-edge equipment that athletes have today; she was just like any other ‘working mum’. Mary worked eight hours a day at a Guinness factory and cheekily says it was a half pint of the well-known stout that was the secret of her success.
“I really went there because they would give me time off when I had an international meet and they also paid me my salary when I was away. I was lucky! Guinness was amazing to me. Every lunchtime I had half a Guinness.”
Rand posing at a photoshoot in 1969
Mary was a trailblazer in the sixties. She was one of the icons that made London the place to be in that decade – one journalist described her as ‘Marilyn Monroe on spikes’.
She was not only the darling of the print media but also mixed with pop royalty. Mick Jagger even said she was his dream date. Sitting in her home she remembers that time with fondness.
“I was at the BBC one day and the Beatles were there. I met two of them, Ringo and George I think, And then Mick Jagger, I never actually met him, but they asked him if he could go on a date with anybody and he said it would be me. I don’t know if that was good or bad but anyway that’s what he said”.
Jagger, like the rest of the nation, was captivated by Mary, a pathfinder for women’s sport in this country. She was feted for her athletic achievements and won the Sports Personality of the Year award in 1964.
Rand competes at the Southern Counties Women’s Athletics Championships
“At the time I didn’t know what affect it would have, but I think what you would hope for is that when you do something like that, it’s going to inspire young athletes to want to train and do well. And also to think, ‘she did it so there is no reason that we can’t do that’.”
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Ann Brightwell (nee Packer) talks about her incredible life as she became the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal on the track almost 60 years ago
Ann Brightwell (nee Packer) talks about her incredible life as she became the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal on the track almost 60 years ago
Ann Brightwell, then-Packer, was not supposed to win the 800m at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Up until the first round of the event at those Games, she had run only a handful of 800m races in her life – locally, and as stamina training for her main event, the 400m.
In the heat and semi for the 400m at the Games, Brightwell had run personal bests and European records. She was a strong favourite, but in the final she was beaten by Australia’s Betty Cuthbert.
Cuthbert had won golds in the 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay at the Melbourne Olympics eight years prior. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, she had an injury and did not make it past the quarter-finals of the 100m and decided to retire from the sport.
But by 1964, she was back, and hungry for a medal in a completely new event – the 400m, which she won.
“I was very disappointed, because I was favourite. I’d run the fastest time in the world that year. But you know, it didn’t work out on the day,” Brightwell tells Sky Sports.
Cuthbert won in a new Olympic record of 52.0, just 0.2 seconds ahead of Brightwell who had set two of her own Olympic records in the heat and semi-final respectively.
Disappointed with her 400m silver, Brightwell said she did not feel like running the 800m, but her then-fiance Robbie Brightwell, captain of the athletics team, persuaded her to run the heat.
Robbie Brightwell and his then-fiancee Ann Packer – seen here before the 1964 Olympics – often trained together
‘Nothing to lose’
Brightwell came fifth in her 800m heat in a time of 2.12.6 and just qualified for the semi-final.
“I had nothing to lose, it was just that I was really disappointed. So I was determined that I needed to qualify. I just did what needed to be done,” Brightwell said.
In the semi-final, doing what needed to be done meant cutting another six seconds off her personal best.
She was the second-slowest qualifier going into the final. In sixth place at the 400m bell and sitting at the back of the main pack, Brightwell launched into a sprint finish with 150m to go, and by the home straight, continued to pick the other runners off and take the lead.
Brightwell crossed the line in 2.01.1 – a new world record.
The first five runners of the race had all beaten the previous Olympic record.
“I didn’t expect it,” Brightwell told us. “I didn’t even know what the world record was. But I didn’t expect to win it!
Packer was surprised to win gold in the 800m at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, in a world record time
“I can remember Robbie and the relay team had just finished a semi-final of the 4x400m relay and they were all there. He said to me: ‘You don’t realise what you’ve done’. And I don’t think I did, really.”
Ann had unknowingly started a very exclusive club: only four British women have won Olympic gold in an individual track event. The next person to join Brightwell on that list was Sally Gunnell in 1992, followed by Kelly Holmes in 2004 and Christine Ohuruogu in 2008.
“It isn’t until quite a lot later that you realise the enormity of it, because there are some great athletes that never get the gold medal for one reason or another. So yes, it’s sobering. And it’s a proud moment. But it’s more relief than anything,” she added.
Packer on October 27, 1964 at Heathrow Airport in London upon her return from the Olympics with the gold and silver medals she won
Packer is kissed by her fiance Brightwell who told her ‘you don’t know what you’ve done’ after watching her win the 800m in Tokyo
So now, as she turns 81 and celebrates her birthday on International Women’s Day, how does she reflect on that moment?
“I just wanted to be an Olympian. It isn’t until many years later that you do realise what a big impact it does have on young girls to think, well, if she can do it, I can do it. I was just a kid who happened to be able to run fast,” she said.
“It’s very important for young people to have role models. And if you’re in a position to make yourself into a role model, then it is something to be proud of, and something to pursue.”
British athletes Ann Packer, Robbie Brightwell and Mary Rand receive MBE medals at Buckingham Palace in 1965
So how different was the world of women’s sport in the 1960s?
“It wasn’t very inclusive,” Brightwell said.
“It was very different because girls tended towards netball or tennis. My two events in Tokyo were the 400m and the 800m. The 400 had never been run in the Olympics before. And the 800 had only been introduced in the previous [Olympics].
“It wasn’t quite right to see ladies sweating or being distressed at the end of a race. So there was nothing above 800 metres, whereas now we’ve got everything apart from the 50km walk – we go right up to the marathon,” she said.
Olympic champion Packer was a PE teacher at Coombe County Girls School and was given time off to go to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964
After the Olympics, Brightwell retired at the age of 22, meaning she had one of the shortest athletics careers of any British Olympic champion.
“It was amateur in the strictest sense of the word,” she explained. “I had a job. All of us had jobs. It was a question of if you could get time off to compete.
“I was a teacher and I’d only just started at a new school. I had to ask before they gave me the job, if they would let me go to the Olympics, because it’s five or six weeks away.
“Some athletes had to give up their jobs. Some had to take unpaid leave, some got sacked.
“And so I did retire early, but it’s what we did, because we had to get back to work. Logistically, it was very difficult to train because it wasn’t full-time.”
Ann Packer married fellow athlete Robbie Brightwell at Moulsford Church in Berkshire in December 1964
Ann and Robbie went on to marry, and had three sons who would carry on the Brightwell sporting legacy – Gary, Ian and David Brightwell.
Gary followed his mother’s footsteps and was a successful 400m runner, while both Ian and David went down the football route.
Ian Brightwell played 468 league games in the Football League and Premier League, in a career spanning 20 years. Over 300 of those games were for Manchester City, where he is now an ambassador.
Speaking to Sky Sports about his mum’s success, Ian said: “Not many people have achieved what she’s achieved. And I think it gives an inspiration to all females, whether in athletics, or in any walk of life, if you want something, go and grab it, work hard.”
David, whose daughter has been inspired by her grandma, also played for Manchester City from 1988-1995, as well as for Bradford City and Carlisle United. He said when they were younger, he and his brothers did not realise how much of a superstar his mum was.
“We didn’t know anything else really. And it was a bit like that growing up,” David said. The medals came out probably a couple of times a year. But other than that they were in a drawer. It wasn’t until the Olympics came round, every four years, people got a little bit more interested in it,” he said.
Ian adds: “I think for me, it was school sports days. When you’re at primary school, there was the parents race. So we got the trump card. We couldn’t quite work out why she kept winning every year. I thought that everyone’s parents had won a gold medal, which they haven’t!
“But when you get a little bit older, you start to think and look exactly at what they did achieve. It was incredible. And we’re very proud.”
