| Medal record | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Mary Peters (athlete) |
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| Women's Athletics | |||
Competitor for  United Kingdom |
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| Olympic Games | |||
| Gold | 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. 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.
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| As pentathlon | 1964: Irina Press • 1968: Ingrid Becker • 1972: Mary Peters • 1976: Siegrun Siegl • 1980: Nadezhda Tkachenko |
| As heptathlon | 1984: Glynis Nunn • 1988: Jackie Joyner-Kersee • 1992: Jackie Joyner-Kersee • 1996: Ghada Shouaa • 2000: Denise Lewis • 2004: Carolina Klüft |
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| 1964: Mary Rand (long jump) | 1964: Ann Packer (800 m) | 1972: Mary Peters (pentathlon) | 1984: Tessa Sanderson (javelin) | 1992: Sally Gunnell (400 m hurdles) | 2000: Denise Lewis (heptathlon) | 2004: Kelly Holmes (800 m & 1500 m) |
| Preceded by Princess Anne |
BBC Sports Personality of the Year 1972 |
Succeeded by Jackie Stewart |
