Mary Glen Haig, who has died aged 96, competed as a fencer in four Olympic Games between 1948 and 1960, and was subsequently a formidable sports administrator who, for 12 years, was one of Britain’s two representatives on the International Olympic Committee.
Her Olympic career began in London. The 1948 austerity Games, as they were known – the entire budget was less than £750,000 – marked some sort of return to sporting normality after the second world war, though conditions were spartan. Glen Haig shared a room with two other women, sleeping on camp beds. The night before her competition, she had been working in her job as an administrator at King’s College hospital. When asked if her work colleagues were impressed with her Olympic selection, she said: “I don’t think they were too bothered. I think when you’ve had a war and ghastly things to contend with … things like winning medals, we didn’t worry about things like that in those days.”
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