Q & A : Even Motherhood Hasn’t Cooled the Competitive Fire Inside Her

There’s nothing like a seven-month-old daughter to put your priorities in order, which is why Mary Decker Slaney is sitting at the kitchen table with an insurance agent.

Her husband, Richard, is entertaining two guests in the living room of the Slaney’s unpretentious two-story, three-bedroom home that blends into an upper middle-class neighborhood of Eugene.

Many of their neighbors’ driveways are decorated with expensive foreign cars, but the Slaneys sold their BMW after Ashley Lynn was born in June. The car in their driveway is a Volkswagen station wagon.

Toys are scattered throughout the den. The big-screen television is on, turned to a soap opera, but the volume is off. On top of the television are two video cassettes, “Trim Your Taxes” and “Winnie the Pooh.”

The living room is tastefully decorated. A large Christmas tree stands at one end of the room. Except for an oil painting, which hangs above the mantel, there is no evidence that one of the world’s best-known athletes lives here. It is of Mary running in the 1984 Olympics, a memory that both haunts and inspires her. Most of the other pictures are of Mary, Richard and the baby at home.

Norman Rockwell would have liked this scene.

So does Slaney, 28, whose friends say she has long desired a quiet, domestic life style. Her first marriage, to distance runner Ron Tabb, ended in divorce, as did her parents’ marriage when she was 15.

“Since Ashley was born, I’ve discovered there are a lot of things more important than throwing the discus,” Richard is saying. He is the British record-holder but doesn’t expect to compete beyond the 1988 Summer Olympics.

“When you start thinking that way, maybe it’s time to get out.”

He owns two tanning salons, but he wants to sell them and go into business buying, repairing and selling World War II planes. He studied jet engineering at San Diego State. Before the after1852796782in Van Nuys for a Navy plane.

Mary’s business will remain on the track. The owner of every American record from 800 through 10,000 meters, she took last year off to have the baby. She had planned to make her comeback on the track next month but instead had surgery on an Achilles’ tendon in November. She should be fit in time for the world championships next summer in Rome.

When she enters the living room, the first thing she does is show her guests baby pictures.

Only then can the interview begin.

Question--How has motherhood changed your life?

Slaney--Before, I thought I didn’t have enough free time. Now, I know I don’t have any. I used to be able to shop for groceries, run errands, do the laundry and other housework while Richard worked. Now, I have to have a little bit of help in the house because I can’t do it all.

But she’s a great, great baby. She travels well, never cries on airplanes. She sleeps all night, eats well. It’s fun.

Q--Are you able to train as seriously?

A--I don’t think about training and running as much as I used to. I think of her so much, whether she’s eaten, whether she’s changed. But when I train, I think only about training. I just make sure someone is with her that I can trust. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that’s Richard.

Q--Are you still as committed to your career?

A--A lot of people are skeptical about having a baby and having a career. But if anything, it’s made me more ambitious, even more ambitious to get back. I’m really, really hungry at the moment, really anxious for the world championships and the Olympics.

Q--Why?

A--I set so many goals so many years ago. I really want to accomplish them. I don’t have that many years to do it.

Q--What distances will you run this year?

A--I want to concentrate on the 800 and the 1,500. I think of myself as a relatively good 800 runner. I broke the American record (1:56.90) in 1985, but I’ve never trained for it. I feel I can run quite a bit faster if I take it seriously.

Besides, the 800 and the 1,500 require the same kind of training. By focusing on them for a year, that will help me in the 3,000 the following year.

Q--Do you have any times in mind?

A--Yes, but if I were to tell you what they are, you’d think I was nuts.

Q--Then it’s safe to assume they’re world records.?

A--If they’re not, they’re very close.

Q--Do you want to enter both the 800 and the 1,500 at the world championships?

A--I’ve seen the schedule, and I know I can do it if I qualify (at the TAC championships in June). The prelims and finals for the 800 are completely finished, then there’s a break before the 1,500 begins. That’s the way it was in ’83. The 3,000 was completely finished before the 1,500 began.

In ‘83, all I wanted to do was win the 3,000. The 1,500 was icing on the cake. I ran to win, obviously, but a lot of the pressure was gone at the 3,000. It won’t be this year after the 800.

(Richard, who is in and out of the living room during the interview, hears this response and seems startled. He asks her why there would be more pressure in ’87 than in ’83. “I want to win both,” she says.)

Q--After everything you’ve accomplished, what do you have to prove at the world championships?

A--In ‘83, I won the 1,500 and the 3,000. If I can win the 800 and the 1,500 in ‘87, I’ll be the first person in history to win major championships at those three distances. That would be a big accomplishment for me personally.

Also, good performances help the sport for women. When you look at 1986, the only good performances in middle distances were by (Norway’s) Ingrid Kristiansen. The others were running 4:30 and 4:35 in the mile. Nobody wants to pay to see that.

That’s why you go to the big meets in Europe and find they have 10 running events for men and three for women. You can’t blame the people that put on the meets.

Q--Do you feel any other runner in the United States closing on you?

A--There’s no one I could name now. If I’m healthy, I’m hard to beat. Of course, people have gotten better. I have to be fit to win. Six or seven years ago, I didn’t have to be fit. Now, I do.

I’m not saying I won’t be beaten. Somebody might run the race of a lifetime against me. That’s what happened with one person I won’t name (Ruth Wysocki in the 1,500 at the 1984 Olympic trials). Consistency is a word that isn’t often used in the same sentence with her.

Q--Do you intimidate the other American runners?

A--I really don’t know what goes through their minds. But some of them don’t even try. I can’t see that. Even when I ran against (Tatiana) Kazankina (of the Soviet Union) on the night she did 3:52.47 (in the 1,500), I ran with her through the first 800. Then she was gone. But I didn’t sit 10 yards behind her and think about the fast time she was going to pull me to. I tried to win. You have to try.

But most of the other competitors just want to use me as a rabbit. When I’ve had my best races, I’ve pulled a lot of other people along to their best times. They don’t appreciate it.

Q--You’re not friends with most of your competitors, are you?

A--It’s not because I don’t try. I don’t think I’m unfriendly to them at all. But when I’ve tried to be friendly, I’ve been accused of trying to mess with their heads. Now, I don’t bother. Men seem to be able to handle friendships better with people they compete against.

Q--Are the other women jealous?

A--It’s the green-eyed monster. I’m sure it pleased a lot of them when I fell at the Olympics. They don’t mind when I pull them to faster times. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I’ve increased the value of the sport in this country. The simple fact is that a good race brings spectators, and, the more spectators you have, the more races there are, and the more money everyone makes.

All the people cheering and clapping when I had the unfortunate incident at the Olympics are the people I’m helping. But they don’t care.

Actually, I think what happened at the Olympics has helped the sport. One thing a lot of people are going to remember about the ’84 Olympics is my fall. They’ll be following the sport because they’re interested in seeing what happens to me in ’88. I know I am.

Q--Zola Budd and her coach at the time, Peter Labuschagne, since have said that Zola was at fault for the incident. Did that tell you anything you didn’t already know?

A--That’s always the way I perceived it. I tried to be honest at the time. I knew that they eventually would realize what happened. I’m really happy that they did. I think they were tired of it, too.

Now, all the people that put me down, who saw the great opportunity to rip me apart, they’ve got egg on their faces.

In the live commentary on television, they called it the way it was. The next day, it all changed. I haven’t spoken since to (ABC commentator) Marty Liquori. We were friends, but I don’t respect him if he was pressured to change his opinion.

Q--Yet, you sent an apology to Zola, didn’t you?

A--Not for anything that happened, but for what the press did to us both. We both suffered a lot for the experience. Because I’m the older of the two of us, I wanted to make a gesture to her.

Q--Are you saying you don’t feel the press was fair?

A--You never are, are you? What really gets to me about the American press is how fast they dropped it after Zola said she was at fault.

Q--If you could run the race again, what would you do differently?

A--I would take off from the start instead of running with the pack.

Q--Since you usually have so little competition, you don’t have much experience running in packs. Did that contribute to the incident?

A--It was a lack of experience on both parts. She didn’t accelerate when she cut over; then I didn’t react the way I should have.

A lot of the men runners have told me that I should have pushed her. That was the first thing that went through my mind. But I thought the repercussions of that would have been disastrous. I did what I thought was best at the time. Next time, I’ll do what I think is best, which means I’ll push.

The interview is interrupted as Slaney goes for a workout. She usually trains on the bicycle path along the Willamette River, but, on this afternoon, to accommodate a Times photographer, she goes to a more picturesque sawdust running path on the outskirts of downtown known as the Amazon Trail. All of the great Eugene runners have trained there. Prefontaine. Salazar. Rono. Slaney.

It is a chilly, damp afternoon, but the air is fresh. Even though she was on crutches less than three weeks before, after her surgery, she runs three miles. Her pace is a little over seven minutes, which doesn’t please Richard when she tells him later.

He says she will never learn. Once, after having her appendix removed, she began running again so soon as that she had to hold her sutures to keep them from tearing apart. Six days after she gave birth, she began running again. She hurt her leg, sat out for a few weeks, then came back and reaggravated an old Achilles’ tendon injury, resulting in surgery.

“That’s not crawling,” Richard says when she tells him of her seven-minute pace. “I can barely run a seven-minute mile.”

“You can’t run a seven-minute mile,” she says.

“But I can beat you at a shorter distance.”

“Forty yards.”

“That’s maximum velocity,” he says.

“For you,” she says, “that’s maximum distance.”

Upstairs, Ashley wakes up from her nap and begins to stir.

“How convenient,” Richard says as Mary goes to get the baby.

After Mary leaves the room, Richard says: “I know how it sounds when I give her a rough time about coming back too soon from the injury, but you don’t know what it’s like to live with her when she can’t run.”

When Mary returns, Ashley in her arms, the interview continues.

Q--You probably had your best year in 1985, when you broke the American record in the 800, the world record in the mile (4:16.71) and ran the second-fastest time ever in the 3,000 (8:25.83). Was that victory in the 3,000 at the Grand Prix finals in Rome, where you beat (Olympic champion) Maricica Puica and Zola Budd, your most satisfying ever?

A--I don’t know if it was better than the world championships in ‘83, but it was probably equal. After the incident in the Olympics, my goal was the Grand Prix final in ’85.

That was the race that put an end to the ’84 season for me. I left something unfinished in ’84. It took me another year to do it, but I finally finished it.

Q--When did you realize you had that race won?

A--I knew it from the start. I knew from running in Europe all summer that I was stronger than they were. Puica tried everything that summer except racing from the front, which she never does. She tried making her move early; she tried making it late. Nothing worked. I knew I could handle whatever she had to dish out. I felt really confident, really strong.

Q--Can Puica challenge you in the 3,000 in ‘88?

A--What is she, 36 or 37? Every year, she talks about retiring. Her best race last year was the Fifth Avenue Mile. She won, but she was hard-pressed to run 4:19.

Q--Will Budd be a threat?

A--She’s obviously talented, but I don’t know how consistent she’s going to be. She’ll have one good race, and then she doesn’t duplicate it. She hasn’t gotten any better. To be honest, I don’t know what to think about her.

Q--And the Soviets?

A--They don’t have anybody up and coming, but they have a tendency to spring things on you at the world championships and Olympics.

Q--What comes after ’88 for you, the 10,000 and the marathon?

A--If I run any marathons, it won’t be until after 1992. I’ll probably run the 3,000 and the 5,000, if there is one on the program by then, in 1992, maybe even the 10,000. I can run the longer distances well. I just don’t train for them. I ran one 10,000 on the track and broke the American record (31:35.3). It’s ridiculous that no one has broken that by now. I did it in 1982.

Richard hates the word marathon . He feels I’ll destroy myself if I train for the marathon. He may be right. If I run one, it will be far enough down the road that it will be the only thing I have left to do.

Q--Are you planning to have another child?

A--We’re considering having a second one after ‘88, maybe in 1989. Notice I said considering . I haven’t forgotten what pregnancy did to my body. It’s wonderful being a mother, after I had the baby. It was the nine months before I hated.

I was so immobile. After four or five months, the way I was carrying the baby, I couldn’t run at all. I was going crazy. I had to eat more. The doctor kept saying, “More protein, more protein,” which I rarely eat. I gained only eight pounds the first six months, and then, all of a sudden, I was a blimp. I gained 26 pounds.

And then I hated labor. I hated it; I hated it.

Q--Was it a natural childbirth?

A--Oh, no. I was in labor for almost nine hours. The doctor said it was because I was in such good shape. Parts of my body that were supposed to move didn’t move. I’ve never felt any pain like that, but it was all worth it. I just don’t know if I want to go through it again.

Q--Will you encourage Ashley to go into running?

A--I think I’m indifferent. I won’t discourage her, but I won’t push her toward it, either. Whatever makes her happy.

Q--Since Richard also is an athlete, is there much competition in your marriage?

A--I asked him about that last night, whether he would still be interested in the sport and all the traveling when I’m in it and he’s not. He wants to compete for two more years, while I want to go on for 10.

I think he will be. He’s very supportive. That was a problem in my first marriage. There was constant competition between us. But I think Richard realizes by now that he’s never going to set the world on fire in the sport. He’s extremely interested in my career, but he also has his own interests, like his airplanes.

Q--Is there anything you would like people to know about Mary Slaney that isn’t commonly known?

A--I’m very domestic. I like to sew and knit and cook. We both like being at home. That’s one reason we chose to have a baby. We like staying home with the baby. When we’re traveling, we get invited to go dancing and to parties, but we don’t like that sort of thing.

Q--Then you’re happy?

A--Yes, very.

Q--You have everything you want?

A--She nods.

Richard begs to differ.

“Not the airplane, yet,” he says.