After day one of the competition, she held a commanding lead over the field, after producing the best opening day score ever recorded, 2,969.

But to the astonishment and acclaim of a partisan crowd, West Germany's Heide Rosendahl made huge inroads into Peters' lead on the morning of day two, producing an astonishing 6.83 in the long jump, just a centimetre short of her own world record.

It was now down to the competition's final event, one in which Rosendahl had every reason to be confident (she would later win gold in the 4x100m relay). The 33-year-old Peters had already achieved personal bests in the 100m hurdles and the high jump and now faced the prospect of being overhauled in the final event by a sprint specialist and local favourite.

True to form, Rosendahl scorched the track, completing a half-lap in a personal best of 22.96 seconds. She had broken the World and Olympic records for the pentathlon and the gold medal was hers.

But only for 1.12 seconds.

Peters managed to heave herself to a personal best of 24.08 seconds, 10 metres behind Rosendahl in fourth place.

The raucous crowd was silenced as they waited for the computer to deduct who had done enough to win the greatest pentathlon ever. Finally, Peters was confirmed as the winner with 4,801 points, by the sliver of 10 points, with East Germany's Burglinde Pollak just 23 points further back in third.

It was a world record total, and constituted Britain's only gold medal of the 1972 Olympics.