The Great Rematch Is Coming Saturday : Decker Slaney and Budd Square Off in 3,000 in Meet at London

Last summer, Mary Decker Slaney went crashing onto the Olympic track in the final of the 3,000 meters, her gold-medal hopes shattered in a frozen moment before a worldwide television audience of approximately 500 million.

And according to whom you want to believe, it was all the fault of the waif-like Zola Budd, the South African-born barefoot runner, competing in the final for Britain.

The world has since waited for a rematch.

At least race promoters have been angling to get them back on the same track to sort out who is best at 3,000 meters.

The fact that it is probably Maricica Puica of Romania, who went on to win the gold in that Olympic race, is beside the point.

Slaney, who is now married to British discus thrower Richard Slaney, and Budd, two inches taller, 10 pounds heavier and beginning to look more like a teen-ager than a little girl, will clash in London on next Saturday during a Grand Prix track meet.

Puica, originally slated to run in the event, will not compete. Nor will Doina Melinte, Romania’s 800 meters Olympic champion.

But the race has guaranteed the meet is a sellout, and as Andy Norman, the promotions officer for British Athletics says: “We are looking forward to a great head-to-head race.”

But just how great a race will it be? Anything other than a convincing win for Slaney is hard to imagine. She appears fully recovered from two separate leg injuries that blighted her winter season, and in Cork, Ireland, on Tuesday, was just 800ths of a second off her American 800 meters record, winning in 1:57.68.

Meanwhile, Budd has struggled. Beaten in two of her three early season races, she has looked sluggish. She was sixth in a race won by Puica in the World Games in Helsinki last week.

But there will be another crucial factor at stake on July 20. Who will the crowd support?

A little over a year ago, Budd went through the formalities of qualifying for Britain’s Olympic team. The clinching moment came on June 6 last year at Crystal Palace, when she swept past the Olympic qualifying time for the 3,000 meters in a European junior record of 8 minutes, 40.22 seconds.

Many people at Crystal Palace that night were prepared to support Budd through the tough summer ahead. But these days, not too many in Britain really care what she does.

Many are upset about the amount of time she has spent in South Africa since being made a British citizen on April 6 last year, and of the attitude that she and Coach Pieter Labuschagne seem to be displaying to the British public.

And it now seems plain that Budd, as her detractors said from the beginning of her relationship with Britain, is using the Union Jack very much as a flag of convenience.

She incensed British officials in November when she announced in a handwritten statement in Afrikaans that she was quitting international athletics and returning to South Africa.

Nigel Cooper, the secretary of the British Amateur Athletic Board, was hastily dispatched to South Africa in order to persuade her to change her mind. He managed to do that and she eventually returned to Britain, although it was two months before she came back.

On February 16, anti-apartheid demonstrators blocked her path as she competed in the English Cross Country championship, forcing her to withdraw.

She was briefly hospitalized--and the following day flew to South Africa to see her sick mother. She returned to Europe in March and won the World Cross Country title in Portugal, then spent the next three months in South Africa training for the summer season.

The latest episode was reported last week when Budd said in an interview with a Seattle television station that she deliberatly “threw” the Olympic 3,000 meters final in Los Angeles after her collision with Decker.

She said she didn’t want to win a medal, stand on the rostrum and face more boos from the crowd after Slaney fell.

“I knew I could have won a medal,” she was quoted as saying. “I think people would have booed again and I didn’t want any of that, so I ran slower not to get a medal.”

That revelation was made public the day after Budd proclaimed that she was going to the Helsinki meet and would attack the 5,000 meters record. Then coach Labuschagne got into a public row involving Puica.

He claimed that he and Budd did not know Puica was competing in the race and thus they would have to change their race plan.

“Zola can’t run the race we planned because Puica would simply outkick her at the end,” he said. “We’lll have to replan the whole thing.”

Labuschagne and Budd did not re-plan well enough. Puica simply outkicked her at 300 meters--as did five others.

Budd, at 19, has reached puberty. That normally brings not only a more adult body, but a more adult approach to life. Many people are hoping for a more mature Zola Budd.

But whether it is Zola Budd of Britain, or Zola Budd of South Africa, remains to be seen.