Nina Ponomaryova, Russian discus thrower – obituary

When, on August 29 1956, a 27-year-old Russian woman was detained by shop assistants from the millinery department of C&A, it was not immediately apparent that she was Nina Ponomaryova, or “Miss Muscles”, as she was affectionately known to athletics fans. She spoke no English and was unable to explain why she had five hats – apparently unpaid for – in her bags: four were feathered (yellow, mauve, black and white) and the fifth was red and made of wool.

After being unable to produce a receipt, she was charged with theft and told to present herself at the Marlborough Street Magistrates Court the following day. But Nina Ponomaryova, who was married and had a young son, failed to appear, thus setting off a chain of events – referred to in Fleet Street as the case of “Nina and the Five Hats” – which produced rage and embarrassment in both Soviet and British diplomatic circles.

She was in London in order to compete at a two-day athletics international. A world record holder in her field, she was part of a team of Soviet athletes who, along with their British counterparts, saw the event as a warm up for the Melbourne Olympics, which were to be held that November.

When it became apparent that she seemed to have vanished and her embassy denied any knowledge of her whereabouts, a warrant was issued for her arrest. The Soviet athletics team manager then announced that she was “victim of a dirty provocation” and that he had no choice but to withdraw his team from the athletic meeting.

The Soviet embassy demanded that the charges against Nina Ponomaryova be withdrawn. Then Galina Ulanova, the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina – who was about to embark on a much-publicised trip to Britain, where fans had queued for three days to buy tickets to see her – expressed her outrage at what had happened to her compatriot and announced that she would not undertake the trip if she could not do so “without fear of prosecution”. The British ambassador to Moscow, meanwhile, found himself “summoned to the Kremlin to be harangued over this piddling business”.

With Nina Ponomaryova still apparently nowhere to be found, the rest of the Soviet team flew home. But six weeks after the original incident it was revealed that she had been staying at the Russian embassy all along. She was taken to court, where she was given an absolute discharge but ordered to pay three guineas in costs. She sailed home immediately afterwards.

That autumn she only managed a bronze medal at the Melbourne Olympics, but in 1960 in Rome she regained the gold, becoming the oldest Olympic champion that year.

Nina Ponomaryova was born on April 27 1929 in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals. Her parents were in exile after being imprisoned as enemies of the Soviet people during the Stalin era. She took up the discus in her late teens when she was training to be a teacher at the Stavropol Pedagogical Institute.

In 1948 at the Stavrapol Krai Championships she set a regional record of 30.53 metres and she soon began training with the coach Dmitry Markov. By 1952 she was a member of the first Soviet team to compete at the Olympics, where her gold medal-winning throw set an Olympic record at 51.42 metres.

After her 1960 Olympic triumph she retired from competitive sport and worked as a coach in Kiev and then in Moscow.

Nina Ponomaryova, born April 27 1929, died August 19 2016