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Rand, who was born in Wells, Somerset, on 10 February 1940, was a prodigious talent, attending Millfield School on a sports scholarship before being expelled after going to Paris with her then boyfriend and becoming engaged.<\/p>\n
She burst on to the international scene at 18 with long jump silver at the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, and set a British record on her Olympic debut in Rome in 1960.<\/p>\n
Four years later and now a wife and mother to the first of her three daughters, Rand set an Olympic record with her first-round jump. Her final jump of 6.76m broke the world record.<\/p>\n
In an era of amateurism, all her success came when she was working part-time in the postal office at a Guinness factory in London.<\/p>\n
She was described as “Marilyn Monroe on spikes” by a former national athletics coach and also caught the eye of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.<\/p>\n
“I was at the BBC one day and the Beatles were there. I met two of them – Ringo [Starr] and George [Harrison] I think,” Rand told Sky Sports in 2023.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n