Mary Decker and Zola Budd – Los Angeles 1984 – Part Four

by

“Aftermath: Seeking a Return to Normal“

by Rob Leachman

From the “Great Rivalries in Olympic Track and Field” Series

This Series

In the hours and days following their momentous 3,000-meter clash, the experiences of Mary Decker and Zola Budd were vastly different. And under very different circumstances, each quickly headed for home.

After being examined and receiving treatment for her hip, with a prognosis that would belie the severity of the injury and the amount of time away from competition, Decker was characteristically available to the press. She famously was carried into her post-race press conference by Richard Staley, and then the following day completed her interview with ABC Sports. To her credit, Decker was consistent in all her post-race comments, stressing that she believed Budd had impeded her and caused her to fall, that she (Decker) had done nothing wrong, but showing virtually no anger and little animosity.

Three days after the race, she flew back home to Eugene, greeted by a crowd of more than 250 track fans and supporters. About the cheering crowd, a surprised Decker commented, “I knew people were supportive here, but not this much.”

Decker’s most pressing priority was a quick return to training, hoping to compete in a series of post-Olympic meets in Europe. But with an injury more serious than originally diagnosed, her return to training would be delayed. Mary Decker’s 1984 season had ended on the infield in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Though no less hasty, the circumstances of Zola Budd’s departure from Los Angeles were decidedly different. Immediately after the race, and after trying to apologize to Decker. Budd was escorted back to the Olympic Village. Once she got Zola back in her room, as Mary Peters dealt with the countless calls from journalists and angry track fans, the young, perhaps dumbstruck athlete sat and calmly read a book. As Peters later recalled, “I would have loved if she’d shown some emotion and screamed or cried or sobbed or laughed or shown some expression of her torture and hurt that she must have felt so strongly. But she just sat reading her book . . .” Budd would describe her mindset during this time as “anything but calm,” so it was as if she had been numbed by the seemingly tragic events she had just experienced.

In time, Pieter Labuschagne arrived to take her to her mother’s hotel room, where she was shielded and protected by the one person she knew loved her unconditionally. “I don’t know what I would have done without her because I was totally deflated,” Budd wrote in her autobiography about her mother. “It felt as though my whole life had collapsed, for at that stage of my career, running was everything to me.” Though she was now an international celebrity, Zola Budd was still a shy and sheltered teenager, and once back with Tossie, she took a blanket and curled up for an exhausted nap. Unlike Mary Decker, who longed to quickly return to training and competition, Budd had no such desire. She recounts taking a pair of running shoes and symbolically throwing them in the trash can, telling herself, “I’m never going to run again. I’m never going to run again in my whole life.” Of course, she had numerous other pairs of running shoes, and in short order, she would quietly return to training. But in the hours after the 3,000-final, she equated running with the emotional pain she was feeling, and the young athlete had no desire to revisit that experience.

Also, unlike Decker, who was made available to the press on multiple occasions, Budd had no desire to appear before cameras. One such opportunity led to the first instance in which she stood up to her coach. ABC Sports, which had exclusive rights to broadcast the Games in the United States, proposed that Decker and Budd conduct a debate on national television regarding which athlete, if either, was at fault. With English still her second language, and given her timid demeanor, Budd found this proposal terrifying. But her coach, Pieter Labuschagne, thought such a debate was a good idea, an opportunity to settle any doubts about what had led to Decker’s fall. In the first instance in which she had firmly stood up to her coach, Budd responded with a firm, “No.” This angered Labuschagne, and the relationship between the coach and athlete continued to slowly unravel.

What Zola Budd wanted more than anything was to go home. And not back to London, but rather to Bloemfontein where she could be with her dogs and her cat, and more importantly to be supported by people who understood and supported her. After two days of ice cream, television, and lounging at the hotel pool, Zola and Tossie got their wish, though the circumstances that led to their hasty departure were frightening and dangerous.

As she and her mother waited for arrangements to be completed for their return first to London and then on to South Africa, they received a phone call from an official with the British women’s Olympic track team. There had been threats, she told them, that Zola was going to be shot, and as a precaution, two police cars were en route to take them to the airport. When they arrived, officers with submachine guns escorted them to the waiting vehicles. “They picked me up at the hotel and drove me and mom to the airport, right onto the tarmac, and watched as we got on the plane,” she later recalled. “It was like a movie.” A sad, scary movie. The plane flew directly to Heathrow Airport in London, where eight armed officers escorted Zola and Tossie out the back door of one of the terminals and into another waiting car. As a Heathrow spokesman explained, “Zola was taken out of the airport under a police guard because of death threats we believe came from the United States.” He then added in understated fashion, “Police took the matter very seriously.”

They immediately made arrangements to continue to South Africa and would fly to Johannesburg two days later. During that time, as she longed to return to her true homeland, Budd sought one last time to mend her relationship with her father, who was still living in Great Britain. Zola had not seen Frank Budd since walking out of the house before departing for Los Angeles, and she hoped to regain the connection and support that had been so important to her development as a runner, at least until she became a source of family income. She had purchased her father a small gift while in Los Angeles, and when she offered the pen and lighter to Frank, he commented with sharp sarcasm, “Oh, I’m glad you still remember me.” Zola turned and left, her relationship with a man she had loved and revered largely severed. Frank Budd returned to Bloemfontein later that year, but rather than residing in the Budd household, he eventually moved into a garage that had been converted into a bedroom. The split between Frank and Tossie would soon be formalized, their divorce finalized two years later.

When Zola arrived back at the farm in Bloemfontein, at least two changes occurred. First, the poster of Mary Decker that had adorned her bedroom wall for so long was quickly taken down. Second, and more substantially, when Frank Budd moved back to the family farm, his youngest daughter moved out, renting a nearby small apartment. As she related in her autobiography, “He had hurt me too much in England for me to keep our relationship cordial.”

In time as expected, Zola Budd’s love of running was rekindled, and she prepared to return to competition. But the questions of where she would live and for which nation she would compete were significant complications. She undeniably wanted to live in South Africa, close to her family and in the only environment in which she felt comfortable. But if she ran for her native country, and perhaps even if she competed in South Africa, she would not be eligible to compete internationally. And it was unclear whether she could reside in South Africa and still compete for Great Britain, as IAAF and IOC rules regarding these issues were unclear. Additionally, it was also unclear whether British athletic authorities would permit her to represent their country while living predominantly in another nation, particularly one that had been shunned because of its apartheid policies.

Realizing the pitfalls of such an approach but willing to risk alienating British authorities, Budd decided to effectively have it both ways. She would live in Bloemfontein but compete as a British citizen. In an interview with a South African newspaper, she explained, “For a few reasons, I have decided to stay in South Africa and it is mainly because I enjoy my athletics here more and more. It was always for me important to enjoy my athletics and I hope in the coming years to mean something for South African athletics. The experience in Britain was instructive but I choose rather to stay in South Africa.”

Her decision to compete as a Brit while spending most of her time in Bloemfontein, while certainly good for Budd, was decried in both Great Britain and South Africa. In England, critics condemned the young athlete for manipulating circumstances and abusing her limited British heritage to circumvent the international ban on South African athletes and in the process represent her “new” country in Los Angeles. Now she was admitting as much by returning to her real country while still maintaining her British citizenship. Little did these critics care that all the machinations that led to her move to London were completed by those around her, with little more than her weak acquiescence in response.

Predictably, South African critics, many of whom had questioned Zola’s clandestine gaining of a British passport, were vocal in condemning this new arrangement. Exemplifying these sentiments, the president of the South African Amateur Athletics Union pronounced, “Zola cannot have her cake and eat it. This whole situation has become an embarrassment to South Africa. . .” As he prescriptively concluded, “If she wants to compete internationally, she must go back to Britain, live in Britain, become part and parcel of the community. Otherwise, she will have to let her British citizenship go.”

Within a few months after her fateful clash with Mary Decker, Zola Budd’s desire to compete internationally had returned, but she had no interest in returning to live in Great Britain. As an exciting generational talent, British athletics officials weren’t keen on turning their backs on this young runner who wanted to compete for Great Britain but still live in her original homeland. So, a tenuous compromise was reached that effectively allowed Zola to do all she wanted. Her international running career could continue. So too, though, would criticism continue from multiple fronts, in particular from anti-apartheid forces that latched on to the young athlete as the most visible symbol of South Africa’s racist national policies.

Each in her own way, Mary Decker and Zola Budd had stellar 1985 seasons, in part making up for the Olympic disappointment both had experienced the previous year. First, though, each took steps to add important stability to her life. For Budd, it was her return to Bloemfontein and a far more supportive environment. Her father no longer exerting any direct influence on her life and her relationship with Pieter Labuschagne slowly coming apart, she began developing a team of individuals to guide her career, manage her finances, and eventually provide needed coaching. She was now an international star, and the days of Frank Budd and Pieter Labuschagne controlling the waifish young teenager were clearly over. As she continued to mature, Zola Budd exerted more and more control over her own life and career.

For Mary Decker, stability came at the altar. On New Year’s Day in 1985 in a small Methodist Church in Eugene, Decker and Richard Slaney were married in a casual, twenty-minute ceremony before around 250 guests. This marriage would prove to be long-lasting, and the relationship would provide America’s greatest middle-distance runner with a needed steadying effect. “Richard has a calming effect on me,” the athlete who would henceforth be known as Mary Slaney offered. Three months later, a second ceremony would be conducted in England for British friends and family. They soon settled back into a calm, comfortable life in Eugene in a house that was warm and welcoming but far from ostentatious. Slaney devoted her time to training, completing domestic projects around the house, assisting her new husband with various business ventures, and playing with their cats and dog. One of the most visible athletes in the world, traveling to competitions all over the planet, Mary Slaney was living what many would consider a surprisingly simple and domesticated life. And in the process, she was very happy.

On the track, after a 1984 season that had been in many ways so disappointing, Slaney’s 1985 season was one of her best. After a couple of months of rehabbing her injured hip, she was back to her typically intense training schedule and soon ready to compete in the indoor season. In mid-January at the Sunkist Invitational, at the time one of the most prestigious indoor meets in the world, Decker Slaney smashed the world record in the indoor 2,000, in the process defeating Ruth Wysocki by a half lap. She would go on the break the world record for the mile and set American records in the 800, 1,000, 3,000, and 5,000. It was a truly stellar season.

Though not quite as prolific as that of her American counterpart, Zola Budd’s 1985 season was similarly outstanding, though her success was characteristically accompanied by barriers and complications. Despite having never laid eyes on an indoor track before 1985, she broke the British national record in the indoor 3,000. Later in the season, she broke the world record in the 5,000. But it was in cross-country that Budd experienced her greatest triumphs, with the first coming in the post-Olympic year. And being an athlete associated with South Africa, cross-country races in which Zola Budd was entered were always fraught with security concerns related to anti-apartheid protesters.

Though protesters at times demonstrated at track meets in which she was competing, maintaining secure control over those enclosed venues was much less complex. But a cross-country course followed miles of open terrain, and short of a military-like presence, securing the route was nearly impossible.

At the British Cross-Country Championships on a cold and windy February day, tragedy nearly struck. The course was appropriately marshaled, and given fears about protests, there was a substantial police presence. Still, partway through the first lap, two protesters entered the course and tried to impede the runners. Budd was not in the lead at the time, but knowing the protests were about her, she ran into some bushes as she tried to evade the protesters. As she would later relate, the incident left her frightened and embarrassed. “It was like a bad dream and . . . I can remember thinking that the protesters resembled characters from a nightmare.” As she continued, “I knew that I could not finish the race. I careened off the course and, with the crowd surrounding me, threatening to suffocate me, I crashed through the bushes, crying, in an attempt to escape.” As she explained in her autobiography, this was yet another example of what she called the “Budd syndrome” that she felt she continually faced anytime she competed outside of South Africa. “While most athletes had only to arrive at a venue and run, I had first to fight a political fight in which I had no interest and where I was at an immediate disadvantage.” The incident at the British Championships in Liverpool, however, was the first time she felt she had been directly and physically threatened, and it shook her.

Despite the incident at the national championships, Budd was placed on the British team for the World Cross Country Championships in Lisbon, Portugal in late March of 1985. There were no protesters at this event, though Portuguese authorities proactively deployed some 200 police to try to keep any demonstrations from disrupting the competition. The world championships had been dominated for the past seven years by Maricica Puica and the Norwegian legend, Greta Waitz, though neither was entered in 1985. Still, it was a loaded field, led by the favored Ingrid Kristiansen, another talented runner from Norway who the following month would break the world record in the marathon.

Facing a flat course of 4.99 meters, Budd relished the lack of pressure she faced in the lead-up to the championships. As she wrote in her autobiography, “For a change, I wasn’t under any pressure—I was just another athlete who was in Lisbon to run to the best of her ability—and, although my training had gone well, I didn’t see myself as a potential world champion.” She should have.

Budd eased into the lead at the start, with Kristiansen on her shoulder, and then began to pull farther ahead after the first mile. She won by twenty-three seconds over Cathy Branta of the United States, with Kristiansen finishing third. Just two months shy of her nineteenth birthday, Zola Budd had become the youngest winner of the senior world cross country title. As she later reflected, “It was then, and still is, the highlight of my career.” (Zola Budd and Hugh Eley, Zola, Partridge Press, 1989, p. 100) She further put the victory in perspective, writing, “Crossing the line with a twenty-three-second lead was the greatest moment of my life. Suddenly, everything had been worthwhile, all the training, the trauma of leaving Bloemfontein to become British, the homesickness, and the eternal arguments with my coach about the direction in which my career was going. This was the pay-off . . .”

World Cross-Country Championships, 1985

The Decker-Budd saga leading up to and following the incident at the Olympics had captivated audiences around the world. With both athletes in 1985 performing at a high level, promoters began clamoring for a rematch. And with large amounts of appearance money on the table, the “Slaney-Budd Rematch” was inevitable. Ultimately, all sides agreed on the two runners meeting at the Peugeot Talbot Games on the Crystal Palace track in London. In an age when track and field was bridging the gap from being an amateur sport to outright professionalism, to ensure her appearance, Zola Budd was paid £90,000, equivalent in 1985 to around $117,000. In the eyes of many, this was a ridiculously insane amount of money paid to a teenage athlete who had still not won a major championship on the track. By contrast, Mary Slaney was paid £36,000, or around $47,000. As further evidence of the pull of promotional money in making this race happen, the race was moved back a day to allow ABC television to broadcast it live in the United States.

Neither the gold nor silver medalists from Los Angeles were included in the field at Crystal Palace, in part because the bulk of the appearance fee budget went to the two marquee runners. For her part, after a strong early season, Wendy Sly was nursing a knee injury. Maricica Puica was healthy, but as Olympic champion, she was seemingly unimpressed by the offer of $2,000 for her to participate. Some suggested that such a paltry offer to Puica was by design, an effort to maintain the spotlight on the two runners that casual track fans wanted to see.

Budd would later suggest that she was unaware of the financial demands her advisors had made to the promoters and that she was further turned off by how the race was being promoted as a “grudge match.” As she later wrote, “There was a lot of negative feedback about my so-called mercenary attitude and what really hurt was the fact that I was not aware of how much money was involved.” As she continued, “This seemed to me to be a prime example of commercial exploitation.” When she suggested that she didn’t want to take part in this “grudge match,” much like with the move to Great Britain a year earlier, she was told it was too late, that everything had been arranged. Though her father no longer exerted any influence over her life, it was as if Zola Budd still had limited control over her own career.

Though Puica and Sly were not in the field, Slaney and Budd faced a talented group of runners that included Ingrid Kristiansen, bronze medalist Lynn Williams, and Cornelia Burki, the former South African athlete who had befriended Zola the previous year.

Regardless of the field, the race was dominated by Slaney.

While track enthusiasts hoped the two marquee athletes would battle it out to the end, informed fans and prognosticators could have predicted the outcome. Though she had won the world cross-country title four months earlier, her performances on the track had been more erratic, winning only one of the four track races in which she had competed in 1985. Slaney, on the other hand, was having one of the best seasons of her career, seemingly inspired to make up for the disappointments of the previous year. As she later offered, “I think I really had a special ’85 because of ’84. Every time I got on the track, I wanted to prove to myself and everybody else that I was the best. It was a very important year.” And her personal best in the 3,000 in 1985 was a full eight seconds faster than Budd’s. For Zola to be competitive through the end, much less prevail, she would need to run at a level she had not demonstrated all season, pushing hard from the start to try to reduce the kick of her faster rival. Nothing of that manner would happen on this July day in London. Slaney had hoped for a time between 8:25 and 8:30, but cold and windy conditions would make the attainment of such a quick time particularly challenging.

To compete with Slaney on this day, Budd needed to be motivated to do so. And as she recounted in her autobiography, she simply wasn’t mentally prepared for such a high-pressure confrontation. “… I just wanted to get it over with,” she wrote. “That wasn’t the right attitude at all and, worst of all, I didn’t care.”

Slaney ran a quick first lap in 66.5 seconds as she took a four-meter lead. To her credit, Budd rallied to pull even with Slaney by the 800-meter mark, and then took a slight lead at the end of the third lap. Harkening back to the Olympic 3,000, Slaney commented, “But again, she didn’t accelerate enough to go by.” But then in complimenting her young rival, she continued, “I was happy with her being right there, challenging, because it made me run faster.” For the most part, though, Slaney led from start to finish.

In time, Budd lost contact with Slaney, and the motivation to remain competitive to the end of the race. As she later wrote, “. . . instead of making a race of it, I lost interest, running slower and slower.” Slaney continued to pull away through the last half of the race, finishing with a fast 64-second final lap to clock 8:32.91, the second-best time of her illustrious career and three seconds faster than Puica’s winning time in Los Angeles. Cornelia Burki finished six seconds back in second, followed by Ingrid Kristiansen. Zola Budd finished twelve seconds back in fourth, a placement that was seemingly less disappointing to Budd than to everyone else. Immediately after the race, she commented, “After the first five laps, it just wasn’t there anymore. The last two laps were the worst, and I was in pain during that part.” Just as she had twelve months earlier in Los Angeles, Zola Budd had simply wanted to get the race over.

With characteristic candor and perspective, Mary Slaney reflected after the race, “This doesn’t prove anything—the Olympic champion is still Puica.” Regarding the so-called “rivalry” that had caused this race to occur, she offered, “I hope the Mary-Zola thing is over.”

For these two iconic and incredibly talented athletes, though, “the Mary-Zola thing” would never be over.

Mary Slaney-Zola Budd Rematch, Peugeot Talbot Games, 1985

Up next:

Part Five: Mary Decker and Zola Budd – Los Angeles 1984


Read the full Mary Decker and Zola Budd – Los Angeles 1984 series:

References

Apple, R.W., Jr., 1985, “Slaney Topps Budd in their Rematch,” The New York Times, July 21, 1985

Budd, Zola, 1984, “Budd: ‘My World Was Shattered,” The Daily Mail, published in The New York Times, August 13, 1984)

Budd, Zola and Eley, Hugh, 1989, Zola, London: Partridge Press

Burfoot, Amby, 2016, First Ladies of Running, Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Books

Friedman, Steve, 2009, “Zola Budd: After the Fall,” Runner’s World, October 2009

Henderson, Jason, 2016, Collision Course, Edinburgh: Arena Sport Books

Moore, Kenny, 1985, “Sweet, Sweet Revenge” Sports Illustrated, July 29, 1985

Murphy, Frank, 2000, The Silence of Great Distance, Kansas City: WindSprint Press

Neff, Craig, 1985, “Mary, Mary, Still Contrary,” Sports Illustrated, January 28, 1985

Reid, Scott, 2009, “Slaney Still Remembers ‘The Fall,’” Orange County Register, August 3, 2009

Taylor, Susan Champlin, 1986, “Mary Decker Takes a Run at Happiness with Husband Richard Slaney,” People, September 29, 1986

United Press International, 1984, “Cheers for Decker, Threats for Budd,” printed in The New York Times, August 14, 1984

Wilkinson, Carl, 2002, “What Happened Next? Zola Budd,” The Observer of London, November 24, 2002

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