She Won’t Take It Lying Down

Mary Decker Slaney is one of the greatest runners America has ever produced. She holds the world record for the mile and every American record at every distance from half a mile to 10,000 meters.

So, it’s a ticker-tape parade, flowers on opening night, an adoring public, America’s sweetheart, right?

Wrong. Mary comes into focus in the public mind, lying on her stomach on an Olympic infield, teeth gnashed, tears coursing down her cheeks while she pounds the ground and wails “Get away from me!”

She has the negative image of the spoiled child holding her breath till she turns blue or gets her way. She comes into range with the public infamy most people would have to rob banks or burn flags to obtain.

It would seem unfair. No one remembers Babe Ruth striking out with the bases loaded or Dempsey on one knee at the end of the Tunney fight. We remember them in their triumphs, pointing to the bleachers, standing over a fallen Firpo.

Mary gets remembered for a series of mistakes at the 1984 Olympics not the least of which was not running her normal race, which was way out in front of everybody, like Secretariat at the Belmont of ’73.

Mary fell from more than a gold medal. She fell from grace.

When she ran into Zola Budd that fateful day, it was like a motorcycle gang running over a statue of the Virgin.

Zola Budd was everybody’s orphan that year, a mere slip of a girl who ran like a blithe animal but who got caught up in the insane politics of the time. She had to run for a country not her own and in front of “countrymen” who jeered and spat at her as if she were responsible for the sins of a lot of old generals and bankers.

In addition to everything else, Decker had actually run up on the heels of Budd, and the mood of the press was pretty much summed up by The Sporting News journalist, Dave Nightingale, who observed dryly: “When I got my first driving license, years ago, my father said to me, ‘Son, if you ever rear-end anyone with this car, just reach for your wallet ‘cause it’s going to be your fault.’ ”

But fault is one thing. Historical injustice is another. And Mary Decker Slaney rear-ended more than Zola Budd that Aug. 10, 1984.

For Decker Slaney not to have won a gold medal is as depressing a footnote to history as Rod Carew never playing in the World Series or a Barrymore never getting an Oscar.

Never mind that Mary was all-world before the Olympics--Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year in 1983, undefeated in 20 finals at all distances and on all surfaces. Never mind that she, along with hundreds of others, lost all chance to win anything in the ’80 Olympics.

The injustice was underscored in the post-Olympic year, 1985, when Mary not only won 14 straight races but trounced the Olympic champion, Maricica Puica, and Zola Budd, both, five times, setting a world mile record against them. The last and only time Puica beat her was in the Olympics and Budd has never beaten her since.

But Mary realizes that none of that erases the awful image of the infield that August twilight. Heroic measures are called for.

She plans to make them. She plans to win a gold medal at Seoul in ’88. Then, she plans to win another at Barcelona in ’92. Then, she plans to get the women’s mile record down to 4 minutes flat. Since it is currently at 4:16.7--held by her--that would be major time shaving.

The fall might have been a blessing in disguise. It might have given Mary a new purpose, although she scoffs at the suggestion that she might have retired after the incident. “Never!” she hoots. “I was making plans to go to Europe for meets that very night!”

The new Mary Decker Slaney will, thank God, look a lot like the old one. In a sport practiced by a lot of women who look as if they should be running tugboats, Mary looks as if she just stepped off the runway at Givenchy’s.

Not even a new baby--Ashley, 11 months--can mar the chorus-line perfection of Mary’s 5-foot 6-inch, 105-pound silhouette and the new season will feature probably the most beautiful set of legs ever seen outside of net stockings. Ten years ago, Doris Day would have played the Mary Decker part.

Mary will start her Seoul search May 16 in the Pepsi Invitational track meet at UCLA. She will run in the mile there and she will, subsequently, put in some 800-meter work. She plans to make it so that if anyone wants to collide with her in the 3,000 meters at Seoul, they will have to do it by parachute.

She wants an Olympics where they’ll carry her on their shoulders, not on a stretcher, where she’ll be laughing on a victory stand, not crying in the dirt. Mary is nobody’s little lamb anymore. That one was a kid. This one has a kid.