“The Tragic Rise of Zola Budd”
by Rob Leachman
From the “Great Rivalries of Olympic Track and Field” Series
This Series
While eight-year-old Mary Decker was going to school and playing with her friends in New Jersey, Hendrina Wilhelmina “Tossie” De Swardt was giving birth to her sixth child. But things at Bloemfontein Hospital in South Africa were not going well, and after a very difficult delivery, both mother and child were in serious condition. After three days of labor, a daughter was born through an emergency Cesarean procedure, with the mother hemorrhaging blood and her child being placed in an incubator out of fear she had experienced oxygen deprivation. Of course, Tossie and her daughter both survived, though the child was thin and pale. Her father, Frank Budd, commented years later, “The nurses told me the kid’s a stayer. For a while, we didn’t think she would survive. But the little bugger pulled through. She had to be tough just to get born, and she’s been tough ever since.” Because the father wanted a child with a name beginning in “Z,” the daughter was named Zola.
The Budd household was like many in South Africa in the 1970s, not poor but certainly not affluent, connected to nature, and Afrikaans. Tossie’s ancestry was Dutch and Frank Budd’s relatives had come from England, but the home had a distinctly South African flavor. The Afrikaans language was spoken in the household, and young Zola developed only minimal proficiency in speaking English, an issue that would become more significant as she rose to prominence in the running world. Frank Budd worked at the printing plant that had been founded by his father after emigrating from England. The family moved a great deal, from small farms to the city of Bloemfontein and back to the country. The capital of the province of Free State of South Africa, Bloemfontein was a city of around a half-million residents, a vibrant community situated at 4,500 feet in elevation.
As a child, though, Zola loved the countryside and was drawn to the animals that seemed to surround the smallholdings on which the family lived. Dogs, cows, chickens, ostriches, and springbok all ended up as part of the menagerie of animals that young Zola cherished. In reality, though, like many young South Africans, she simply thrived on being outdoors, running and playing along the veldt.
As her father would describe her, “She was always a quiet, withdrawn child,” but she did not lack friends and playmates. There were two relationships in her childhood that were particularly close. The first was with the son of a Black farm worker. As she described him in her autobiography, Zola, “My best friend… was a black boy, Thipe. He was the son of one of the farmworkers, and we became inseparable. …those were the best times of my childhood.” Then harkening to the racial issues that characterized her country, “While the rest of South Africa saw each other as whites, blacks, coloreds, and Asians, we were free of prejudice. We were friends who couldn’t care less what color we were – and what fun we had!” She would lose contact with Thipe after her family moved back into the city.
The other particularly close relationship was with her sister, Jenny. Her father was often busy with his job at the family printing business and her mother, who was rather sickly throughout Zola’s childhood, ran a catering business out of the family’s kitchen. With several other children in the household, they often lacked the time to devote to their quiet and introverted youngest child. Eleven years older, Jenny soon became like a substitute parent to her younger sister. and Zola came to adore and emulate her.
Jenny enjoyed running through the hills around Bloemfontein, like many young South Africans unconsciously seeking a greater connection to her spectacular surroundings. When Zola was old enough to do so, she ran with her sister. She almost always ran barefoot, not for financial reasons, though her family was not wealthy, but because that’s simply what South African children typically did. Running in nature, with Jenny, occasionally interacting with animals indigenous to the area, brought great joy to young Zola. A few years later, when her world had changed in so many ways and running had come to represent so much that was wrong in her life, she would strive to rediscover that joy.
She wasn’t particularly good at team sports and wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she could run. In primary school, at what is often called the annual “field day,” she won the sixty-meter-dash two years in a row. A decade before they would fall out over issues related to her running, Frank Budd was there to share in his daughter’s pride over these early athletic achievements. In fact, he would do all he could to help Zola to be successful as she subtly began to expand her running career.
Zola had a rather odd gait as a child, walking and running with her feet pointed inward in a distinct pigeon-toed manner. At thirteen, she underwent surgery to remove a small bone from each of her arches. Afterward, she had to endure some extended time in casts as her feet healed, a difficult period for the shy youngster who relished her time outdoors. In time, though, the casts came off and she could resume her regular activities, including running with her sister. Post-surgery, her gait was far less pigeon-toed, but the running style of the spindly, long-legged teenager remained very distinctive.
During her junior high school years, Budd transitioned from sprints to longer distances. In her first such event, a 1,200-meter run, she finished an impressive full lap ahead in the three-lap race. Though that victory had come against admittedly sub-stellar competition, the grit and potential young Zola had demonstrated was enough to convince Frank Budd to seek someone with some coaching expertise to provide his daughter with needed guidance. What would follow was a relationship that would continue through the young athlete’s most productive, and most difficult, years.
Pieter Labuschagne was a history teacher and volunteer coach at a local high school, and Frank Budd asked him to evaluate and potentially work with Zola. The young teacher was far from an expert on running, but he had been a decent runner himself in his earlier years, and simply knew more about training than anyone else who was available. What he saw in Zola Budd was a great deal of raw talent, but an even greater amount of determination. As he later recalled about the then eleven-year-old runner, “She didn’t smile much, or joke with the other kids. When she began to run, she took on that great frown of concentration from start to finish.” As he added a colorful description, “Her determination came across like an army of safari ants on the march. She was the most dedicated runner I had ever seen.”
While Labuschagne may not have been a running guru, Arthur Lydiard most definitively was, the coach of Olympic legend Peter Snell among others and considered by some to be the greatest running coach in history. Zola Budd’s coach began applying Lydiard’s training principles to his new charge. And under this system, young Zola flourished. Labuschagne worked with her to develop a strong base of endurance, running greater mileage at a comfortable pace to build a strong foundation. Then as more important competitions approached, they would utilize faster-paced training, including tempo runs and intervals, to develop needed racing speed. For a young athlete who thrived on carefree running in the hills and on the veldt around Bloemfontein, it seemed an ideal training system. And strictly in terms of her development as a runner, the training program Labuschagne developed for Budd worked incredibly well. Compared to Mary Decker, who at a comparably early age was thrust into a training program focusing on hard interval repeats, this training program offered a much-reduced chance for injury or burnout.
An issue where the coach tried, with only partial success, to change Zola involved footwear. Like many South African children, she had seldom worn shoes while running or playing outside. And working with Labuschagne, that would only partly change. He convinced her to wear shoes while running on the roads where rocks and glass and other debris could wreak havoc on the soles of runners’ feet. But on the track or trails or grass, she ran barefoot. The coach put this issue in perspective when he offered, “I figured she must run in the way she feels most comfortable. There’s nothing especially strong about her feet, or in the way she places them on the track. I suppose that she is so light that her weight doesn’t put any strain on her feet.” That and the fact that she had been running barefoot as long as she had been able to run.
It was a happy time for Zola Budd. Running was a source of joy, she enjoyed school and playing with friends, interacting with her animals, and spending time with Jenny, to whom she was closest of all. Though she was on the cusp of amazing athletic performances, she led a normal, largely happy, childhood.
That all changed in 1980.
Not unlike the household in which Mary Decker grew up, the home in which Zola Budd was raised was increasingly fractious. Her parents experienced marital challenges that only increased over time and would lead to their eventual divorce. Her mother Tossie had been sickly for some time, and that combined with her difficulties with Frank left her with a quiet sadness. At times when her youngest child needed her most, Zola’s mother was increasingly unavailable to her.
It wasn’t that Zola had a particularly sad childhood. She had her friends, school, her running, her animals, the South African countryside, and other sources of contentment. But there was a void in her life, and to fill that emptiness she turned to her sister Jenny.
Jenny was eleven years older than the thirteen-year-old, and to Zola, she was a mixture of big sister, role model, confidante, and ad hoc mother. The bond between the two sisters was incredibly strong, and over time Zola came to rely on Jenny for so much, most notably companionship and support. As she wrote in her autobiography, “Of all the people around me it was Jenny who understood me best of all . . .” As she continued, “It was to Jenny, not my mother or father, that I had turned to for strength, guidance, and love when I was small . . . Growing up in a household often made unhappy by the widening gap between my parents, I always regarded Jenny as the strong one in my family.”
In 1980, Jenny was hospitalized after being diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer that was even deadlier decades ago than it is today. To shield their youngest child, Zola’s parents didn’t allow her to visit her sister in the hospital and provided scant information about the seriousness of her condition. So, it was particularly shocking when, at 4:00 a.m. one morning, Zola’s sister Cara woke her to inform her that Jenny had died.
Typically quiet and introverted, Zola normally kept her thoughts and emotions to herself, and with the receipt of this devastating news, she responded no differently. Her one outlet for sharing those thoughts and emotions, her sister, had been tragically taken from her. As she later reflected in her autobiography, “She and I had a special bond between us, a relationship so strong that when she was taken from me so suddenly it was as though a part of me had died.” Her response was not to cry or scream in anguish. To deal with her grief, Zola Budd ran, longer and harder than the young teenager had run before. As she wrote, “Running was the easiest way to escape from the harsh reality of losing my sister because when I ran, I didn’t have to think about life or death.” Still tied closely to her now-deceased older sibling, she continued, “. . . by running away from my grief I was proving to Jenny that in athletics I had found something I could really do well.”
As devastating to Zola Budd as was the death of her sister, by her reckoning that pivotal event served as the springboard to the young runner’s development as a world-class athlete.
That rise to the top echelons of her sport was rapid, made possible through countless hard, driven workouts running on the veldt around Bloemfontein. With her awkward gait and elbows flaring outward, when she immersed herself in the joyful pain of a hard run, she could, at least momentarily, muffle the never-ending emotional pain she otherwise struggled to overcome. And in the process, she again found some joy in her life.
She developed a routine that typically included two workouts each day. Rising early, in the pre-dawn hours she completed a relatively short run of a half-hour to 45 minutes, returning in time to get ready for school. After school, she returned home, completed her homework, and then in the late afternoon returned to her high school to complete intervals and pace work. Working now under the guidance of Pieter Labuschagne, she was eventually running up to 60 miles a week, considerable mileage for a young teenage athlete relatively new to such long and intense training.
Apart from the after-effects of losing Jenny, these were happier times for young Zola. Still a few years from the dissolution of her relationship with her father, she enjoyed driving into Bloemfontein with Frank in the early morning hours, meeting her coach and several other runners at 5:30 a.m. and then completing a seven-mile loop with her teammates, her father and Labuschagne following in a car. The route took the runners past the city’s zoo, where native animals like springbok and impalas watched as they quickly passed by. It was a time when the shy and intelligent young athlete enjoyed running for the pure joy involved, a time before success brought unreasonable expectations and exploitation.
Improvement and success came quickly. In April of 1981, just before her fifteenth birthday and the day after finishing a close second in the 1,500, Budd ran 2:11.9 to win the South African Under-16 800-meter title. She had focused on the longer event and entered the 800 “intending to run hard but without anticipating anything exciting.” When with 300 meters to go and the pace slower than she had anticipated, she surged into the lead, anticipating that the other, faster runners would pass her on the homestretch. They did not, and Zola Budd had won the first of her many South African titles, a race she considers one of the highlights of her career.
That win solidified her resolve as well as her realization that her talent was perhaps greater than she had realized. It also strengthened the bond between Zola and her coach, with both realizing that working together, the young runner could potentially accomplish great things. In response to this win, she simply trained harder. As she wrote in her autobiography about this time in her career, “I was good, but I could be better. . .” Continuing to work with Pieter Labuschagne, she did just that. As for his impact, the coach downplayed his role in her improvement, suggesting, “Zola is a running machine. All I’m doing is improving the infrastructure, the capacity of the lungs and efficiency of the body.” At this pivotal point in her career, Labuschagne worked to control Budd’s training load rather than to motivate her. “I have been holding her back,” he explained in 1984. “If I’m not with her in a car or running alongside, she trains too hard. If I tell her to do another two kilometers, she’ll want to do five. If I say six sets of 800 meters, she’ll do eight.” Labuschagne had her running primarily on roads and trails, largely avoiding track work that might have even hastened her improvement; it was as if he feared the intensity she would bring to speed work, inevitably breaking down the young athlete’s body through her passionate desire to get faster.
Early in the 1982 season, she set her first world junior record, running 15:35.7 to break the standard in the 5,000-meter run. While that distance was not yet a common event for women, Budd followed up that performance later that season with another world junior record, lowering the mark to 8:46.4 in the 3,000-meter run, which was scheduled to become an Olympic event in 1984. Continuing her rapid improvement, she lowered that world junior record by seven seconds, in the process breaking the South African senior record for the 3,000. To provide some perspective regarding that record time, 8:39.0, such a performance would have placed seventh in the upcoming World Championships in Helsinki, the race that was the first half of the “Double Decker.” Like her idol, Mary Decker, the athlete whose poster adorned her room, Zola Budd was becoming a world-class teenager.
As stellar as had been her record-breaking performances in 1982, 1983 was in many ways her breakout season, highlighted by a South African 5,000-meter record of 15:08.3, within two seconds of Mary Decker’s world record. Continuing to improve and in a season in which she was still only sixteen, 1983 saw Zola Budd set five world junior records and five South African senior records and win six national senior titles.
Becoming famous in her home country, Budd was named the 1983 South African Sportswoman of the Year. Yet, to the rest of the world, the young prodigy was largely unknown, completing stellar performances in anonymity. And with the Los Angeles Olympics just a year away, it would be natural under typical circumstances to include this budding South African champion in discussions about favorites in the 1,500- or 3,000-meters. But as 1984 began, there appeared to be no Olympic future for Zola Budd.
A country with stunning topography and rich, diverse history, South Africa in the 1980s was internationally associated with “apartheid,” which translates to “separateness” in Afrikaans. With longtime traditions of segregation and discrimination of its non-white populations, the separation of races was codified into law in 1948, which led to the national control by the white minority (less than 20% of the population), and in turn the legally sanctioned discrimination of the much larger non-white majority. This action led to the ostracization of South Africa by most nations in the world, and that pariah status eventually spread to the Olympic movement.
Segregation extended to countless areas of South African society, including sports, where only white athletes could represent the nation internationally. As a result, beginning with the 1964 Tokyo Games, South Africa was barred from the Olympics, a ban that would extend through the 1988 Games. In 1970, South Africa was formally expelled from the International Olympic Committee.
Some athletes of color, most notably middle-distance runner Sydney Maree who moved to the United States and competed for Villanova University before ultimately becoming a U.S. citizen, utilized opportunities to compete for American universities as a means of working around the international ban on South African citizens. After her breakout 1983 season, Zola Budd’s performances brought enough worldwide attention to garner inquiries from some U.S. universities. Though she would have been a standout on virtually any American collegiate track and cross-country team, leaving her family, her home, and her country at this early age would have been particularly challenging for such an introverted young woman. After high school, she enrolled in the University of the Orange Free State, studying political science, history, and the South Sotho language, with hopes of eventually pursuing a career in international diplomacy.
A homebody of sorts who had never experienced the world outside of her native country, Zola wanted to compete internationally and test herself against the best runners in the world. But she lamented the lack of competitive opportunities only to a point. “It’s a drawback in some ways, but there are other things that compensate for being in South Africa.” She continued, “When I run, I know people outside take notice of my times, so it really is not so isolated. And when we run a race, particularly at Stellenbosch, the crowd helps you to run well.” It was as if, given the choice of competing internationally or staying in South Africa, she would choose the latter. In time, that choice would be largely taken away from her.
A stellar South African athlete electing to remain in her home country, Olympic opportunities for Zola Budd in 1984 seemed to be non-existent. That began to change after her first meet of the season in January of the Olympic year.
A large and enthusiastic crowd gathered in Coetzenburg Stadium in the city of Stellenbosch to watch this initial meet of 1984. At this early meet, Zola Budd was entered in the 5,000, a seldom-run distance twelve years before it would become a regular woman’s Olympic event. The world record of 15:08.3 was still held by Mary Decker, and running largely by herself, Budd had come within two seconds of the record the previous year. Early in the season, Labuschagne had emphasized distance work with Zola, who had completed only one track workout in the weeks before this initial meet. It didn’t matter.
Running barefoot, and with no one in the field to push her, Budd took off at the start, strode into the lead, and ran a steady pace of 72 seconds for each lap. Such precise pacing was no small feat for a young runner who had completed minimal speed work in the weeks before the race, and soon she was lapping most of the other runners. Budd was relatively tiny at 5-2 and ninety pounds, and despite her size, the gusting winds seemed to impede her only minimally. The stadium was electric in a venue with spectators close to the edge of the track, and when after the first 1,500 meters the announcer proclaimed, “She’s under world record pace!”, the Stellenbosch crowd chanted, “Zo-la, Zo-la.” As the finish line approached, she maintained a fierce look of determination that belied her seventeen years of age and still thin body, her elbows flailing outward to the end. Her time was 15:01.83, nearly six-and-a-half seconds under Mary Decker’s world record, though due to South Africa’s status with the International Amateur Athletic Federations the time was not eligible for record consideration.
Still, as news of this record-worthy performance reached the rest of the world, Zola Budd’s life would soon change, dramatically. As she reflected on this moment in her autobiography, “At seventeen I was the fastest woman in the world and as the news flashed around the globe, I was to become one of the most sought-after women in the world.” Many viewed her as a hot commodity, a young superstar with a backstory that could generate headlines. And vast amounts of money. Ready to guide that process, and bolster his family’s coffers in the process, was Frank Budd. Regarding this pivotal time in her life, she would later write, “Everybody wanted a slice of Zola’s action . . .” The effort to market this shy, young, and talented athlete would come to define much of the tragedy of Zola Budd’s life.
Journalists around the world began to take notice of this waifish South African runner, competing in isolation against virtually no competition and bettering a world record of the great Mary Decker. One of those journalists was John Bryant, an editor with the Daily Mail newspaper in London. Bryant had been a runner of note in his day and was a former captain of the Oxford University cross-country team. A track and field and running junkie of sorts, Bryant often sifted through the results of various competitions that were reported in periodicals like Track and Field News, Athletics Weekly, and Runner’s World. As he noted the performance of Zola Budd following her record-breaking 5,000-meter performance, the stat seemed too good to be true. As he reflected decades later, “If the results were to be believed, there was a teenage girl, running without shoes, at altitude, up against domestic opposition, who was threatening to break world records.” A features editor for the newspaper, Bryant sensed a compelling story was just waiting to be written, so he dispatched the Daily Mail’s South African correspondent to dig a little deeper. In addition to the folksy and parochial aspects of this potential feature story, the correspondent found that while Zola’s mother was of South African descent, Frank Budd’s grandfather had been a British citizen, which represented a potential gateway to such citizenship for the young phenom.
Leaders at the Daily Mail, led by the editor, Sir David English, sensed a huge story of great interest to British readers. That interest would be enhanced if somehow Zola could gain British citizenship and compete for her new nation in the Olympics later that year. Upon learning that the young athlete had a path to such citizenship, English was later quoted as proclaiming, “Brilliant. Because of the British family connection, she shall run for us. I can pick up the phone and get her a British passport in two days.” Such a seemingly outlandish statement would prove to be quite prescient.
The marital relationship between Tossie and Frank Budd had been deteriorating for several years. And as Zola had gotten older and as her athletic prowess had continued to develop, and as Frank had tried to maintain control over his daughter and her running career, that relationship deteriorated as well. But Frank Budd was a businessman, and he recognized the financial opportunities his daughter’s world-class status presented. Working as quietly as possible, the Daily Mail sent two sportswriters to Bloemfontein to continue documenting Zola Budd’s story. But more importantly, the two served as the tabloid’s representatives charged with negotiating an agreement with Frank Budd, and by extension with Zola.
The Budd family was not wealthy, and the offer from the Daily Mail was lucrative. In exchange for exclusive rights to Zola’s story, the family would receive £100,000, which in 1984 was the equivalent of around $142,000 in American dollars, a huge sum in the eyes of Frank Budd. Because her grandfather had been a British citizen, Zola qualified for a British passport, and to sweeten the deal the editors at the Daily Mail promised to fast-track the process of procuring that passport. With that, she would suddenly be eligible to represent Great Britain in the Los Angeles Olympics, now less than six months away. Unstated but obvious, having this South African teenager with a fascinating background represent the country in the Olympics would only serve to further drive up circulation for the tabloid. Additionally, Zola and her family, as well as Pieter Labuschagne and his wife, would be flown to England and provided housing, and Frank Budd would be provided a job.
As a result of this deal, Frank Budd and his family would receive a much-needed financial boost, the Daily Mail would gain readers, and Great Britain would gain an up-and-coming runner who might compete for an Olympic medal. Seemingly everyone’s interests were considered as this deal was consummated . . . except perhaps Zola’s.
Though she sensed that something was afoot, particularly after seeing her father in deep conversation with two gentlemen she would later learn were representatives of the Daily Mail, Zola had not participated in conversations or negotiations, such as they were, regarding a possible move to Great Britain. She admittedly yearned to run against the best of the world, eventually, but as the process of her gaining British citizenship was being completed, she was still only seventeen and had been largely sheltered her entire life. And it was true that she was unhappy at the University of the Orange Free State, her academic progress continually impacted by classes missed due to her training schedule.
She had touched on this potential issue in an interview earlier in the year, shortly after her world record-exceeding performance in the 5,000. As she suggested, “Sometimes I feel it might be necessary to go overseas (to compete internationally), but I won’t leave permanently. If I had to choose between running and staying, I’d probably stay.”
She considered defying her father’s urging to move to Great Britain, an act of defiance that would have been nearly as significant as the move itself. But when she talked with Pieter Labuschagne and suggested that she didn’t want to make the move, the individual who had rather quickly been transformed from an unknown coach to the mentor of a world-class athlete urged her to go (and take him with her). “Listen, Zola,” he told her, “We have gone this far, so you might as well go through with it.” She acquiesced, not grasping the turmoil that awaited her.
With the consummation of the agreement with the Daily Mail, in many respects, the tabloid took control of the lives of Zola and her family. Representatives of the newspaper arranged the clandestine transport of the family from South Africa to England. Traveling part of the way under a fictitious last name, the family arrived in Great Britain via Nairobi, Kenya, then Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and then by private plane to a location outside of London, where they were taken to a home in a rural area provided by the Daily Mail. The tabloid needed to shield its new subject not from the world’s attention, but rather from the scrutiny of rival newspapers.
Daily Mail representatives had suggested that a passport could be secured for Zola in three days; it actually took ten days, still startingly quick compared to the typical twelve months for non-world class athletes. As the Immigration Minister justified the action, “She is an exceptional girl, and we gave her exceptional treatment.” The Olympics were scheduled to begin in just over four months.
Zola Budd was at first ambivalent about the attainment of the British passport and the competitive opportunities that accompanied it. While she was excited about the opportunity to test herself against the best runners in the world, she was coming to understand the degree to which her world was being turned upside-down. As she wrote in her autobiography, the date of April 6, 1984, on which she was awarded her British passport, should have been a highlight of her life. “But there was no rush of adrenalin, no relief that I finally had the chance to run internationally . . . Instead, I saw the passport that thrust me into the world spotlight as a symbol of my abuse.” As she continued, “. . . from the moment I became a British citizen I felt that my life would never be the same.” In so many respects, this cryptic reflection was spot on.
Reaction in Great Britain to Zola Budd quickly becoming a British citizen was decidedly mixed. In one respect, Great Britain suddenly and unexpectantly had another potential medalist eligible for its Olympic team. It wasn’t that the team was without medal prospects in the women’s 1,500- and 3,000-meter runs, the two events in which Budd was most likely to compete. Most significant among these other runners was Wendy Sly, a talented young athlete who had finished fifth in each event at the previous year’s World Championships. Sly represented many of her British rivals and potential Olympic teammates when she voiced her strong opposition to allowing Budd to represent her new country, going so far as to threaten to boycott the British Olympic Trials in protest. “I knew girls who had given up jobs and given up a lot to train for the Olympic Games, and she was taking their place.” She suggested her greatest objection was to how quickly Budd’s citizenship status had been processed. “Some people should’ve had respect for the other girls. If they had done it last year, twelve months would have been enough to accept the situation. But three months before the Games, she suddenly appears.” As she summarized her sentiments, “As much as she deserved to be in the Olympics, it’s just a shame someone at home had to be left out.”
On the other hand, Frank Dick, head coach of the British track and field team, was far more welcoming of the newly British athlete. “For her age, she is one of the most remarkable athletes of all time.” For her part, Zola was hopeful she would be accepted by the other British athletes, at least early on. “I just hope the other British athletes are friendly. They can’t realize what it has been like running on my own for so long,” she commented shortly after arriving in England. Acceptance by her future teammates and the British people would be, with some exceptions, fleeting.
As with virtually anything and anybody associated with South Africa in the 1980s, the Zola Budd passport issue became comingled with international acrimony toward apartheid. In the eyes of many, including the numerous demonstrators who protested at her races, Zola Budd became the personification of the racist, segregationist attitudes associated with what was now her former country. Despite all the abhorrent qualities associated with South Africa’s racial policies at the time, making a naïve, sheltered, and largely clueless seventeen-year-old Afrikaans girl the symbol of those archaic practices was in many ways unfair. But the widespread viewpoint of many Britons was expressed in a headline in the Daily Express, another tabloid competing with the Daily Mail for precious circulation, which proclaimed “Zola, Go Home.” At her races leading up to the Los Angeles Games, protesters carried placards suggesting, “Zola represents apartheid, not Britain” and “If Zola runs, apartheid wins.” On many levels, to the young athlete, this was all a source of befuddlement.
Her first race on British soil, a 3,000-meter event on an outdated cinder track in front of 6,500 fans and countless television viewers in Dartford, Zola won easily and officially reached the Olympic qualifying standard. The young athlete, who had found her greatest joy running through the South African veldt and the hills around Bloemfontein, was too overwhelmed by the hoopla to properly warm up in front of the large crowd of her new countrymen. As she wrote later in her autobiography, “I wasn’t prepared for. . . Dartford. It was scary being singled out as the focus of attention and I needed a police escort to get to the track.” The entire experience was overwhelming but was a harbinger of what was to come.
As part of the Mail’s public relations strategy, after the race, Budd was led to a throng of reporters for her first meeting with the British press, an onslaught of questions for which she was woefully unprepared. As she was growing up in the Budd household back in Bloemfontein, the family’s predominant language was Tossie’s native Afrikaans, with Frank’s English spoken only sporadically. As a result, despite her newly awarded British citizenship, Zola struggled to converse with reporters and other British nationals. This, however, was only a part of her challenge as she met with the press following her initial race in Great Britain. As she later described the scene, “Sitting in front of a battery of cameras, I was asked about things I had never even thought about—politics, apartheid, my attitude to running—and I left Dartford bemused by the whole experience.” Bemused, perhaps, but the apartheid questions were particularly stinging.
South Africa began the systematic rollback of its segregationist laws in 1991, but in 1984, the country was still best known for those racist practices. Among many young, white South Africans, however, apartheid practices were largely taken for granted, all they had ever known, and seldom discussed. Zola Budd fit firmly in this category, sheltered from discussions about such political issues. Frank Budd had shielded his daughter from answering apartheid-related questions. He stated, “What does a seventeen-year-old kid know about that? You can’t expect her to answer questions like that. She’s not ready.” He was so correct, and as a result, she struggled to address these issues in that initial press conference.
She couldn’t adequately respond to the countless questions about segregationist policies because as a shy and sheltered South African she had not pondered those issues. As she recounted years later, “People don’t want to believe it, but growing up in South Africa, we were so isolated, we didn’t have any international news coverage. Nelson Mandela went to prison before I was born. I didn’t know about his existence. His name was never mentioned in any newspaper. For me, it was an eye-opener to go to Britain to see coverage about South Africa.” Similarly, in another interview, she more bluntly discussed her lack of knowledge about real conditions in South Africa. “I was brought up ignorant of what was going on. All I knew was the white side expressed in South African newspapers—that if we had not had apartheid, our whole economy would collapse. Only much later did I realize I’d been lied to by the state.” In time, when she made a rare comment on the subject, she tried to take a loftier angle, suggesting that she wanted to focus on sport rather than politics. “Apartheid and the other things began before I was born. . .” Pivoting as she continued, “In the meantime, I want to run and I will run with or against anyone, of any color, anywhere, at any time, and may the fastest win.” Predictably, answers like this one did little to satisfy the hordes of reporters who clung to her every word regarding this explosive topic.
It is possible that she refused to definitively address these inquiries because she truly had not formulated a reasoned opinion, which would not be uncommon for a teenager almost totally focused on running. Perhaps less plausible is the notion that she refused to answer questions about South African segregation because she believed politics had no place in sports, a reasonable stance but not one likely to have been solidified in the mind of a sheltered teenager.
But regardless of the reasoning, and even though a clear statement denouncing apartheid would have likely squelched much of the opposition. Zola Budd refused to make such a statement. And in the eyes of the British press, the lack of such a denunciation simply reinforced the perception that she was a symbol of the South African system. Though she was accepted and supported by some Britons, her acceptance was tepid at best, and with anti-apartheid demonstrators an ever-present possibility every time she stepped on the track, Zola felt shunned by her new country.
Back in South Africa, she was being portrayed in the press as a traitor and a defector, someone who had opportunistically turned her back on the Afrikaans people to seek personal gain. This despite the fact, unknown to the South African public, that she hadn’t wanted to move to Great Britain, that she missed her home country desperately, and that with her father in charge of her finances, her economic benefit from the move was minimal.
As the Los Angeles Olympics approached, Zola Budd found herself in an untenable position. She was living in and getting ready to represent a country that didn’t fully accept her and in some respects denounced her. She was picketed for political views she likely did not hold but which she would not denounce, and she was homesick for a homeland in which much of the press was condemning her. Young, shy, and feeling increasingly isolated, with what would prove to be the most important competition of her athletic career coming up in just a few weeks, she was like a runner without a country. And while she had always valued the freedom and joy that running provided her, with her father’s agreement with the Daily Mail, training now seemed like little more than an onerous job.
Still, in the runup to the Games, Budd further solidified her position as a legitimate Olympic contender. In July, she won the British title in the 1,500-meter run. Then, in her final race before traveling to Los Angeles, she established a new world mark in the seldom-contested 2,000-meter run. In that race, she broke the mark previously held by Maricica Puica, the formidable Romanian runner who was being largely overlooked by many as the Olympics approached. That race was symptomatic of Zola’s life at this time, outstanding running completed during a time of profound mental anguish.
Utilizing a more subjective process for selecting its track and field team, Great Britain athletics officials chose Zola Budd, Wendy Sly, and Jane Furniss to compete in the Olympic 3,000-meter run. It had been Budd’s dream to compete against the best in the world, but with the hype and resultant pressure she was feeling, her inevitable selection brought her limited joy. As she wrote in her autobiography about her record performance in the 2,000, her last race before the Olympics, “I had gone into the race regarding it as a means to an end: ‘Get this over and then you just have the Olympic semi-finals and final before you can go back to South Africa,’ I told myself.”
No doubt there were times when she was excited about competing in Los Angeles, such as when she received her uniform with British colors. But her relationship with her coach, the one individual who had seemed to understand her, was beginning to sour. And before leaving for the United States, the conflict with her father reached a crisis point, and she would ultimately tell him she didn’t want him with her in Los Angeles.
Everything was happening quickly, too quickly, and the young runner’s need for time to adapt to these changes didn’t fit within the Daily Mail’s timetable. As she writes, “Given time to work things out myself, there is no doubt that I would have settled down and adapted to my nationality change. But I needed to go at my own pace . . .” All these many issues became overwhelming for the now eighteen-year-old. As she reflected, “My desire to run was gradually being soured, like a jug of milk having lemon juice squeezed into it drop by drop.” With the Olympic 3,000-meter final, that souring would be complete.
Adding to her discontent, Zola Budd felt tension and antagonism all around her, and a common factor in all those issues was Frank Budd. Frank and Tossie Budd had been drifting apart for some time, with different aspirations and divergent ways of living fueling their eventual separation. The move to Great Britain, to which Zola’s mother had been opposed, was a particular source of contention. Frank was enjoying living in England, which he largely considered to be his native land, and he relished visiting his relatives and the prominence that his daughter’s running ability provided him. Tossie, on the other hand, was unhappy, concerned about her daughter’s well-being and happiness, and simply wanted to return to Bloemfontein.
There was ongoing conflict between Frank and Zola, the former of whom had spearheaded and negotiated their move to Great Britain, and the latter of whom had resisted the move but ultimately acquiesced. Despite her misgivings about the agreement with the Daily Mail, Zola had initially maintained her faith that her father would continue to keep her best interests in mind. But with the money and other perks that came from the tabloid and other sponsors, it became increasingly apparent to her that much of Frank’s interest in her running derived from his own financial interests. Though Zola turned eighteen in May just before the Summer Games, her father maintained control of all money issues, doling funds out to the young athlete as he saw fit. Given the tension at the home in Britain she shared with her parents, and the growing conflict between her and her father, Zola decided she wanted to move out of the home and found a small flat that she wanted to purchase with funds from the Daily Mail. When she approached Frank, he flatly refused.
Additionally, there was ongoing conflict between Frank and Pieter Labuschagne, much of it resulting from issues of control and jealousy on the part of the former. Frank was increasingly concerned about the influence the only coach she had ever worked with had over his daughter. As a result of these and other issues, two weeks before leaving for Los Angeles, Zola left home and effectively ended her relationship with her father, moving in with her coach and his wife. She told her father she didn’t want him in Los Angeles for the Games. In the Olympic Stadium to provide support would be her mother and coach, but not the man who had been such an important source of support earlier in her life, before her running became so financially lucrative.
Even her relationship with her coach was changing. She had always considered Labuschagne to be the one person who truly understood her, who knew what motivated her, who always had her best interests in mind as he plotted her training. Even after the move to Great Britain, Pieter had seemed to support her as she pondered whether she even wanted to compete in the Olympics. When early on she told him that she was tired of training in England, homesick, and weary of the involvement of the Daily Mail in seemingly every aspect of her life, he was sympathetic. As she wrote, he said at the time, “Tell them how you feel. Tell them you don’t want to run in the Olympics.” When she approached her father with those same concerns, he refused to consider any change of plans.
But in time, she felt that her coach’s interests changed, that he came to relish the notion of coaching a world-class athlete and the notoriety and reward that came with such status. Closer to her departure for Los Angeles, when she told him again that she wanted to return to Bloemfontein, his tone had shifted. As she recalls him responding, “Come on! You’ve come so far that you can’t go back now. What would all the people in South Africa say?” In time, she would come to believe her long-time coach no longer considered her interests and well-being to be of primary importance, and in the coming years, they would eventually part ways.
The Olympic Games represent the highest level of track and field, and to be competitive, athletes typically must be at their peak both physically and mentally. For all but the most superior competitors, anything less diminishes their chances for success. As she departed for Los Angeles, Zola Budd’s world was in turmoil, traveling to a high-pitched competition she at times wanted to bypass, competing for a nation that had adopted her but didn’t completely want her, and with a family life that was in shambles. Such was not a blueprint for success for an eighteen-year-old phenom still new to the highest levels of competition.
Most of this was unknown to the rest of the world, and track and field fans everywhere were enthralled with the Zola Budd story. And in the run-up to the Games, journalists sought any angle that might enhance circulation and viewership. To many, that angle involved pitting the defending world champion in the 3,000, the darling of the running world Mary Decker, against the upstart, ultra-talented, barefoot runner from South Africa. Increasingly this matchup became the focus of pre-Games coverage, and the emphasis on young Zola eventually became an annoyance for established competitors like Decker. When asked about Budd after the young South African set the 2,000-meter record, Decker curtly replied, “About who?” When pressed, she expanded her comments, offering, “What would you like me to say? She’s obviously talented. I’ve never met her.” Then with a dose of the candor for which she was known, Decker added, “To be honest, I’m getting tired of reading my name in the same paragraph as Zola Budd’s.”
Little did she know at the time that after the upcoming Olympic 3,000-meter final, their two names would be forever linked together.
Up next:
Part Three: Mary Decker and Zola Budd – Los Angeles 1984
Read the full Mary Decker and Zola Budd – Los Angeles 1984 series:
References
Associated Press, 1988, “Zola Budd Chronology,” May 10, 1988, downloaded from apnews.com
Budd, Zola and Eley, Hugh, 1989, Zola, London: Partridge Press
Cowell, Alan, 1984, “Barefoot Wisp Who Outran the World,” The New York Times, January 31, 1984
Donahue, Deidre and Reed, Susan, 1984, “Barefoot Girl Zola Budd Runs Heart and Sole for Her New Country, England,”, People, August 13, 1984
Friedman, Steve, 2009, “Zola Budd: After the Fall,” Runner’s World, October 2009
Hawthorne, Peter, 1984, “A Flight to a Stormy Haven,” The New York Times, April 9, 1984
Henderson, Jason, 2016, Collision Course, Edinburgh: Arena Sport Books
Katz, Michael, 1984, “A Mile to Go for Wendy Sly,” The New York Times, September 20, 1984
Longman, Jere, 2008, “An Olympian’s Path Toward Inner Peace,” The New York Times, October 26, 2008
Low, Valentine, 2016, “Zola Budd’s Passport Split Cabinet,” The Times of London, August 24, 2016
Mackay, Duncan, 1997, “Running Back to Happiness – Spring Brings Second Flowering of the Old Budd,” The Observer of London, May 16, 1997
Neff, Craig, 1984, “No Nipping This Budd,” Sports Illustrated, June 18, 1984
Copyright 2021 by Rob Leachman – All Rights Reserved
