A seventeen year old Southwick schoolgirl made history for Sussex in 1952, when she became the first ever Sussex woman to be selected to compete for Great Britain at the Olympic Games, but is she the greatest ever Sussex female athlete?
Well before that date Suzanne Farmer was already making waves in local athletics. Her father, who was also to be her coach and launch her on a brilliant career along with Brighton Athletics Club coach, Alf Palmer, ran the Brighton Speed boats.
She was born on 26th November 1934 in Shoreham. Back in the 1950s Farmer would train religiously at the Sussex Athletics Stadium in Nevill Road, Hove every Tuesday evening and I would train with her. She was a strapping girl, some six months younger than me, and was as big as me. She threw a lighter discus and she would beat the socks off me and after a few months I decided to take up officiating.
Farmer quickly started to collect Sussex shot and discus titles and dominated competitions throughout the county and region. In 1950 she won the first English Schools Intermediate (U17) discus title, becoming the first ever ESAA discus champion. Throwing events were not introduced to English Schools Championships until the 1950s and even then not in the Junior age group until the following year.
In 1951 she successfully defended her English Schools Intermediate title with a throw of 36.66m and added the Senior (U19) title in 1952 throwing 37.40m. Farmer was the first Sussex girl athlete to win three English Schools titles. It was not until 2001 that another Brighton & Hove discus thrower, Claire Smithson, also from Southwick, bettered this with four titles.
In 1951 Farmer pocketed many Area and National junior titles at both shot and discus but it was 1952 when she made the major breakthrough to become the W.A.A.A discus champion and the first ever Sussex woman, or lady as she would be referred to then, to win the title. This effort brought her selection to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games and she travelled with the British team to Helsinki where she finished 15th with a throw of 37.96m. She was just 17 years old.
Four years later in 1956 Suzanne went to Melbourne, where she failed to qualify for the final of the discus but finished 15th in the shot put with a throw of 12.71m. By now she had married the top British hammer thrower, Peter Allday, and moved on to the Spartan Ladies Club.
In 1960, in exceptionally hot conditions at the Rome Olympics, Suzanne Allday did not make the final in the discus despite a fine effort of 41.15m and her shot put mark of 13.15m was also not enough to progress from the qualifying round.
Understandably she was having more success in the Commonwealth Games finishing second in the discus throw with 40.02m in Vancouver in 1954 and also finishing sixth in the shot and sixth in the javelin throw.
Her greatest athletics achievement came at the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff where she won the discus title with 45.90m and took the silver medal in the shot with 14.44m. A few weeks later she set a British record of 14.66m coming fifth in the European Championships. At the Games in Perth in 1962 she took the bronze medal in shot with 13.56m but was squeezed out of the medals in the discus placing fourth with 43.97m.
During this time she was regularly picking up shot and discus titles at the W.A.A.A championships, though she was beaten by fellow Sussex thrower Maya Giri (Horsham Blue Star) in both 1954 and 1955. At the time Giri, who was born in Eastbourne to an Indian father and a Russian mother, was referred to as one of the most exotic athletes in the sport. They had several good battles in Sussex and Giri competed for the county and England and beat Suzanne for the Sussex title in 1953.
In 1958 Allday completed the second of her five doubles of shot/discus victories at the W.A.A.A Championships and in 1963 she won her seventh discus title plus two seconds when she was beaten by foreign throwers.
She continued competing through to the mid Sixties when she gave birth to twins Adrian and Karen. She retired from competitive athletics having competed in no less than 35 Internationals, including major Games, a record for a British athlete, which was to stand until Judy Oakes bettered it in the 1990s.
By the time her children were teenagers, she had split up with Peter Allday, and brought them along to Withdean for coaching, she also returned to training and competing. Adrian showed considerable promise as a hammer thrower, like his father, and qualified to compete in the English Schools championships. Meanwhile his Mum showed she still had the ability to challenge the best, throwing 44.66m in 1978 and 42.12m in 1979, which saw her amongst the top twenty throwers in the country. Suzanne made several appearances for the Brighton & Hove team in the Southern League matches, though she did not stay competing in the sport after her children moved on.
Suzanne was married to Ray Goodison for 30 years. She retained a keen interest in athletics, and attended the county championships a couple of months before her death in Southwick on 26th July 2017 aged 82.