Dame Mary Peters

Former British athlete Dame Mary Peters is one of few English sportswomen to have won a gold medal at the Olympic Games. As such she is perfectly placed, and hugely in demand, to deliver motivational and inspiration guest speeches in front of a range of audiences, from school sports people to corporate businessmen. Born in Lancaster but based in Belfast, Mary’s career was often littered with political troubles back home and so her achievements on the track are even more im-pressive. She competed in the pentathlon and shot put and in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Mu-nich won the gold medal in the pentathlon. He did so by beating the worlds best at that time, Ger-many’s Heide Rosendahl, and also achieved a record high score in the process. Mary also turned out for Northern Ireland at all the Commonwealth Games that occurred from 1958 to 1974 and in that time she managed to pick up two gold medals for the pentathlon, plus a gold and silver medal for the shot put. After retiring from athletics, Mary became a Trustee of The Outward Bound Trust in May 2001 and is Vice-President of the Northern Ireland Outward Bound Association. She is also Patron of Springhill Hospice in Rochdale, Greater Manchester and for her services to athletics was honoured with an MDE, then CDE, then became a Dame in the 2000 Honours list. As such she is a hugely revered sporting figure who has lots of tales to tell and experiences to draw upon.