With Slaney Back in Olympics, Budd Is Back Home : South African Runner Has Faced Disheartening Controversy Since Her Collision in 1984 3,000-Meter Race

Ever since Zola Budd collided with her idol at the 1984 Olympics, she has been unable to break away from controversy and heartache.

The South African runner, who raced to fame as a frail, barefooted teen-ager, was beset by injuries and pursued relentlessly by anti-apartheid groups after her attempt to win a medal for Britain and her crash with U.S. star Mary Slaney.

Slaney will try to wipe out that memory when she runs in the 3,000 meter final Sunday afternoon in Seoul.

Activists viewed Budd’s move abroad as a ploy to circumvent the sports boycott of South Africa, and they campaigned intensively to prevent her from competing again for the British team at Seoul.

In May, she finally succumbed to the pressures, announced her indefinite withdrawal from world track competition because of “nervous exhaustion,” and returned home. Only since then has she found some semblance of tranquility.

Now 22, Budd limits her running to causal jogs and is studying political science and anthropology at the University of the Orange Free State in her hometown of Bloemfontein.

“I hardly have time for training now,” she said recently. “But I know the urge will hit again. I’m not packing away my running shoes.”

Last month, in what local newspapers interpreted as a sign she won’t return to Britain, she announced her engagement to Mike Pieterse, a 26-year-old Bloemfontein liquor store owner.

She also has sold her house outside London.

She first arrived in London in a blaze of publicity in March 1984. Within two weeks, she was granted British citizenship, setting the stage for her trip to Los Angeles and her Aug. 10 encounter against Slaney, the U.S. favorite for the gold medal in the 3,000-meter run.

Halfway through the race, Slaney’s right foot hit Budd’s left ankle, and the American sprawled in tears on the infield of the Coliseum.

A distraught Budd finished to a chorus of boos, was briefly disqualified, then reinstated to a seventh-place finish. The South African said later she deliberately slowed down to avoid winning a medal because she feared another round of booing on the victory stand.

A jury of appeals exonerated Budd, and Decker, at first bitter, eventually said she bore no grudges. South African promoters tried to arrange a head-to-head match race between the two, but the showdown never materialized.

After the Los Angeles Games, anti-apartheid demonstrations occurred almost everywhere Budd ran. Protesters forced her into a thorn bush at the British cross-country trials in 1985, but she recovered to win the world cross-country title that year and retain it the next.

She set a world record in the 5,000 meters in 1985 and an indoor mark in the 3,000 in 1986 before injuries sidelined her for almost a year.

She returned to competition, initially racing under a pseudonym, but the pressure from anti-apartheid groups and black African nations mounted.

Budd’s critics complained of her frequent trips to visit family and friends in South Africa, and they noted that she consistently refused to repudiate apartheid. She decided to quit after world track’s governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, said in April that she should be suspended for having made a public appearance at a track meet in South Africa in June 1987.

On May 10, she announced that she was returning to South Africa to recuperate and there were reports she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her coach in Britain, John Bryant, said at the time: “I have seen her crumble as a human being.”

Budd still remains one of South Africa’s most popular sports figures and is highly regarded in her homeland by both blacks and whites.

Last week, Budd agreed to let a British filmmaker produce a 60-minute documentary aimed at presenting her side of the controversy that has surrounded her.

“The time has now come for her to set the record straight,” said her manager, Ian Banner.

Banner said Budd had been victimized by “an earnest campaign of intimidation and character assassination.”

Said the filmmaker, Kenneth Griffith, after meeting Budd: “She is so good and so innocent. She has been exploited as a symbol of apartheid.”

Reminisces about the Budd-Slaney collision are only one component of what has become a quadrennial fortnight of frustration for the South African sports establishment.

Each Olympiad reminds South Africans that their athletes have been excluded since the Rome Games in 1960. The isolation is compounded by a ban on Olympic telecasts, limiting South African viewers to a few brief highlights on news programs.

The South African who came closest to participating in Seoul was Butch Daniels, who was invited by international fencing officials to serve as a judge. Arriving at Seoul’s airport, he was interrogated, then expelled in accordance with a government ban.

When he realized his fate, Daniels recounted later, “I cried.”