Place Name
Honouring Mary Peters (July 6, 1939), the Ulster pentathlete who won the Gold at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games aged 33. After her victory, death threats were phoned into the BBC: “Mary Peters is a Protestant and has won a medal for Britain. An attempt will be made on her life and it will be blamed on the IRA… Her home will be going up in the near future.” On her defiant return to Belfast she was greeted by fans and a band at the airport and paraded through the city streets, but was not allowed back in her flat for three months. However, she turned down jobs in the US and Australia, where her father lived, and insisted on remaining in Northern Ireland. Later that year she won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award: “Peters, a 33-year-old secretary from Belfast, won Britain’s only athletics gold at the Munich Olympics. The pentathlon competition was decided on the final event, the 200m, and Peters claimed the title by one-tenth of a second.” This is one of a small cluster of roads named after sports men and women. The roads are laid out over former sports grounds, which included tennis courts, a swimming pool and pavilion.
