EDF ENERGY

Ann Packer was an athlete who began her career as a sprinter, hurdler and long jumper and traveled to Tokyo as one of the favorites to win the 400 meters Gold.

Despite comfortably qualifying for the final, she was pushed into the silver medal slot. Hugely disappointed, she briefly lost sight of her Olympic dream. However, she shared a room in the Olympic village with her great friend Mary Rand, who had been wearing the long jump gold medal around her neck for six days, and this acted as motivation for her to enter the 800m.

But Packer had only raced that distance on five occasions and had a very ordinary best performance of 2 mins 5.3 seconds.

Accused of possibly losing the 400m by expending too much energy in preliminary races, Packer listened carefully to her coach and qualified through all the 800m heats running conservatively through each round.

In the final Packer stood on the start line the slowest of eight athletes and having ran the distance also for only that number of times.

Packer ran the perfect race, not only winning the gold medal but also setting a new world record of 2 mins 01.1 seconds.