Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
Zola Budd and Mary Decker. Decker acted like Hillary Clinton, as if she somehow deserved to win a gold medal. She tripped and blamed Budd, in a terrible display of poor sportsmanship.
i just read a "where are they now" kind of piece on Zola Budd in Runner's World. She has led quite a life since then. She spoke of how after that happened in the race she didn't even want to win a medal as people booed her as she continued on. She faded back in the pack and did not medal but it was almost a relief, she was afraid she would have to go on the medal stand and listen to 100,000 people boo her, and she was just a kid racing for a "rent-a-country" that was not even her homeland (she was a South African racing for the UK through a loophole, her father was British). South Africa was not competing due to Apartheid so if she wanted to go to the Olympics that was her only way, and the people of Great Britain did not embrace her at all. she took tons of abuse from British fans, American fans and even Decker, and Decker never "forgave" her and always has seemed to think she deserved some sort of apology. If you watched any of the mid-long distance track races at this years Olympics you saw it is a physical sport where fighting for position is not always polite, there is a lot of pushing and shoving and crossing over. Decker was always a front-runner and frankly didnt know what to do when she fell behind in that race and got boxed in.
Budd has continued running through it all, and has become a fantastic Masters (over 40) ultra-marathoner. I think she coaches cross-country for some small university in the US, and has strangely become a crowd favorite when she races. She races regularly and routinely beats much younger athletes in all distances. Zola Budd was no villain, she was just a kid being used as a pawn by her very domineering father and was in the wrong place at the wrong time under the wrong circumstances.
not that anyone gives a shit, but there you have it!