On the Eve of Race, Slaney Speaks Up for Budd

Hardly a moment passed after the reporter had asked the question when Mary Decker Slaney reached down and came up with a folded sheet of paper.

“Funny you should ask that,” Slaney said, smiling.

The occasion was a press conference Friday for the L’Eggs Mini Marathon, which Slaney is running in Central Park today. The topic was Slaney’s former adversary, Zola Budd.

Asked to comment on Budd’s recent return to South Africa, Slaney read from a prepared statement, saying that she felt a great deal of sympathy for Budd. She also called for all athletes to be allowed to compete in the Olympics.

Budd recently returned to her native South Africa after facing a threat of a year’s ban and certain barring from the Seoul Olympics. Budd had violated a “participation” rule by attending a cross-country meet in South Africa.

Slaney said she had been constantly asked to comment on Budd’s situation and was glad of the chance to make a public statement.

“First of all, I think it is wrong that politics have again affected international sport,” she said. “Although one would be naive to think that Zola could successfully separate her running career from current political issues, I feel tremendous sympathy for Zola or anyone who has devoted their lives to athletics and has been stripped of their goals by political situations beyond their control.”

Slaney, a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that led a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, said that boycotts have never been successful and serve only to inject politics into sport.

“What bothers me most in Zola’s situation is that the problems we face in the world and in sport are far too many and too complex to begin to solve by political banishments and boycotts,” she said.

Budd became a British subject a month before the 1984 Games, drawing criticism that she was choosing a flag of convenience. South African athletes are banned from Olympic competition because of that country’s policy of racial separation.

The athletic fates of Budd and Slaney became entwined at the exact moment in the Los Angeles Olympics that their feet became entangled in the 3,000-meter final. Slaney fell, and Budd stumbled and finished seventh.

After the race, Slaney, in a bitter outburst, blamed Budd for the fall. Budd retaliated in kind and a war of words followed for some months. Eventually, they exchanged apologies.

Coincidentally, their careers have been about equally controversial. That might have prompted Slaney’s sympathetic response Friday.

“Through all of this, I am most certain that Zola has many times felt betrayed and publicly misunderstood,” she said. “I know a lot about those feelings, and for that I also have a great deal of sympathy for Zola.

“Zola and I are both competitors who thrive on racing against the best. My hope is that someday we will be able to once again share the competitive spirit in the same event.”

Chances seem slim, however, that Budd will ever again run internationally.

Slaney was asked if she would look back and wonder what sort of rivalry she and Budd could have had.

“I don’t believe that I won’t ever run against her again,” Slaney said. “I feel that I’ll run against her again.”

It is in part because of Budd that Slaney is here running a 10-kilometer road race, rare for her. She is in training to run the 3,000 at the Olympic trials next month. She has also qualified for the 1,500.

“I will be concentrating on the 3,000,” Slaney said. “The reason for that is what happened in 1984. I want to finish what I started.”

Slaney said the trials’ schedule, which is the same as the Olympic schedule, will allow a double, but she said if she feels at all compromised, she will run just the 3,000.

Slaney heads an elite field in the race here, which will be run over a hilly, moderately paced course. Joan Benoit Samuelson is here, hoping to run faster than 32 minutes 30 seconds, the qualifying time for the Olympic trials.

“If I can run that, I’ll look for a qualifying race on the track for the Olympic trials and then decide whether I want to run them,” Samuelson said. “It would be very hard for me to make the Olympic team. Even if I did, I don’t consider myself a candidate for a medal. Not at all.”

Samuelson, who has suffered back and leg injuries since giving birth to her daughter seven months ago, bypassed the Olympic marathon trial and has been sounding less than enthusiastic about leaving her family behind to go to Seoul.

Also in the race are Ingrid Kristiansen, the world record-holder in the marathon who will run the 10,000 at Seoul; Margaret Groos, the winner of the Olympic marathon trial in April who will also try to make the U.S. team in the 10,000; Lisa Martin of Australia, who won this race last year, and Anne Audain of New Zealand, a former winner here and a three-time Olympian.