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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.”