Rosemary Payne

Christine Rosemary Charters was born on 19 May 1933 in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. She attended Kelso High School and went on to the University of Edinburgh, where she completed a teaching degree. At university she captained the hockey team in 1957 and competed as an all-round athlete, showing ability in the hurdles and jumps as well as the throws that later defined her career. Toni Ireland, a teammate in that hockey side, also represented Scotland in the discus at the 1958 Commonwealth Games.

Charters first represented Scotland at a major championship in the discus at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, where she finished tenth. A breakthrough came in 1963, when she threw 43.43 metres at Pitreavie and earned her first Great Britain vest against the United States that August. In September 1964 she reached 48.07 metres at a Birchfield Harriers floodlit meeting and took the British record, which she would hold for 13 years. She was British discus champion every year from 1964 to 1974.

After a disappointing spell she changed her training, working indoors with a strap discus in front of a mirror rather than throwing in practice, and in 1969 she moved the UK record on to 52.22 metres. At the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, on the opening day of major competition, she won gold with 54.46 metres. Her first throw of 53.18 metres was already nearly four metres clear of the field, and all four of her legal throws bettered Jean Roberts' silver medal mark of 51.02 metres. The victory came about two hours after her husband, Howard Payne, had won the men's hammer for England.

She competed for Great Britain at three European Championships and at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In Munich she qualified tenth with 55.56 metres and finished 12th in the final with 56.50 metres. Her personal best of 58.02 metres also dates from 1972. At the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch she defended her title and took silver with 53.94 metres, behind Jane Haist of Canada, who threw 55.52 metres. She also finished seventh in the shot put with 14.19 metres. That year marked the end of her senior international career. Meg Ritchie broke her British discus record in 1977.

She met Howard Payne, the English hammer thrower, at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, and they married in Birmingham on 5 February 1960. He won Commonwealth hammer gold for England in 1962, 1966 and 1970, with silver in 1974, and competed at three Olympic Games. He died in Birmingham in 1992, aged 60. In later life she was known as Rosemary Chrimes, the name under which she competed for Halesowen Athletics Club as a masters athlete. In March 2026 she was living at Care UK's Metchley Manor on Church Road in Edgbaston, and she spoke to the Birmingham Mail about her career during Women's History Month.

Halesowen Athletics Club, which she represented in masters athletics, announced her death at the age of 93 on 8 November 2026. scottishathletics published a tribute the same day, remembering her as the winner of the women's discus at the Edinburgh 1970 Commonwealth Games, an Olympian, and a highly successful masters athlete who held global records in her seventies and eighties. Wikipedia lists the death as announced on that date. The cause of death and funeral arrangements were not made public.

Payne is remembered as Scotland's discus champion of the 1970 Edinburgh Games, as a British record holder for 13 years, and as an athlete whose competitive life stretched from the Cardiff Empire Games of 1958 into her late eighties. Her 1970 gold, won on the same afternoon as her husband's third Commonwealth hammer title, remains one of the distinctive family stories of those Games. As Rosemary Chrimes she became a byword in masters athletics, setting British age-group records across the throws, jumps and hurdles and multiple world marks, including in the W70 shot put and W80 high jump. Midland Masters Athletic Club recorded more than twenty world-beating performances compiled by Bridget Cushen. In 2026 she urged younger women to be bold and to pursue the sport they loved.