ORANGE COUNTY HALL OF FAME : An Illustrious Track Record : Mary Decker Slaney Is Nothing Less Than a Legend, and Still Striving

Way back when, she was Little Mary Decker, a tiny, tenacious runner in pigtails and braces.

At 14, she was 5-feet-and-a-sliver, 83 pounds and already a phenom, the fastest little girl in the world.

In 1973, the Garden Grove schoolgirl beat the reigning Olympic silver medalist in the 800 meters, outrunning the Soviet on Soviet soil, then came home and suffered her first injury.

Little Mary Decker got her foot caught in her bicycle spokes.

“I remember that,” said Mary Decker Slaney, now 36 and living in Eugene, Ore., with her husband, Richard, and their daughter, Ashley, 8. “I’d been to Europe and come back, and I think I was riding my bike to the ice cream store. I’d been all over the world, and I couldn’t get to the ice cream store.”

A broken toe cost her six weeks of training. The injury was only the first of many that have marked her career, almost as much as world records she held in the mile, her five American records that still stand, the double-victory in 1,500 and 3,000 meters at the World Championships at Helsinki in 1983. And, of course, the commotion that followed her agonizing fall after colliding with Zola Budd in the 3,000 at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Slaney is the best American woman middle-distance runner ever, and without the injuries--and the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow--she would have accomplished even more, almost certainly winning the one thing her career is missing--an Olympic medal. Still, even after some 16 to 20 surgeries--the latest an extensive operation on her left Achilles’ tendon 13 weeks ago--she hasn’t quit and in fact has set her sights on running the 5,000 and maybe the 10,000 in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

“It would mean a lot, and the fact that the Olympics are in Atlanta, in this country, would mean even more because of what happened in ‘84,” said Slaney, who will be inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame Sunday. “I never really thought I would get the opportunity to think about running in another Olympics in this country in my lifetime. It would mean a lot.”

Longtime L.A. track promoter Al Franken, who saw the fluid, gliding stride Slaney had at 13 and knew she would be a superstar, would like to see Slaney return to the Olympics, but says it will be “a terribly tough fight.”

“It sounds terribly difficult because she has just undergone so many surgeries,” he said. “The problem always has been that she was fragile. Terribly talented, terribly dedicated and terribly fragile. I don’t think one person in a million would go through all the surgeries she’s been through. They would just say, ‘I’ve had it.’ ”

Slaney, who appeared only in a few road races last winter, meets her share of people who think she has had it.

“Absolutely,” she said. “They say, ‘Oh, I thought you retired,’ and I say, ‘I’ve just been injured.’ They say, ‘Well, Mary’s coming out of retirement,’ and I say, ‘I didn’t retire, I’ve just been injured.’ That’s OK, given my age and given my problems.”

Even though she will turn 38 in ‘96, if she is healthy--a sizable if-- Slaney probably could make the Olympic team. Perhaps rather easily.

“That’s my feeling, that women middle-distance and distance runners do continue to get stronger,” she said. “I feel if I get healthy and stay healthy for one full year prior to the next Olympics and the Olympic trials, I could run better than I’ve ever run. I’m not trying to duplicate what I’ve done in the past, I’m trying to do better.”

The recent Achilles’ surgery was her second major procedure in the last seven months, after bone surgery on her heel. She is hopeful this will be the one to solve a litany of Achilles’ problems. Doctors and shoe specialists have been studying films and high-tech molds of her feet to try to develop orthotics that will help prevent further injuries.

“Part of it is the way I run, high on my toes, and with a hard push-off,” Slaney said. “In turn, I absorb a lot of shock in my lower legs, which is where all my problems have been.”

Always an impatient patient, Slaney says she is ahead of schedule and hopes to be running road races in three to four months, “then fall right back into the track season in June, July and August.”

For now, she rehabilitates.

“As she would put it, she’s shuffling,” said Richard Slaney, the British discus thrower she married in 1985. “How fast is that? Faster than I can run, for sure. I can’t shuffle with her.”

His wife hardly wants to admit her post-surgery pace on her 30-minute jogs. “Really slow,” she said. “About 7:30 per mile.”

Sure, that’s slow . . . if you set the world record with a 4:16.71 mile in 1985.

Slaney discovered her extraordinary ability by accident at the age of 11, when she and her best friend went to a cross-country meet held by the Huntington Beach parks and recreation department.

“We had finished all our chores for the day and were trying to decide what to do afterward,” Slaney said. “I think it was a Saturday. We had gotten a handout at school the day before about what was going on at parks and recreation that weekend. Neither of us knew what cross-country was. We had no idea it had anything to do with running. We went, and I won. I won easily. I think it was three-quarters of a mile. The next weekend there was a city race and then a county race, and I kept winning all the races.”

She ran for a track club called the Long Beach Comets, and later, the Blue Angels of Fountain Valley.

At 15, she set three indoor world records. By 16, incredibly, her career was in trouble. Shin splints. The 1976 Olympics, when she was 18, came and went. But by 1980, she was back, breaking world records left and right. It was only the first comeback of several--and maybe there will be one more.

“A long time ago, when I first had the first problem, it took me three years to get it fixed,” Slaney said. “I was told by everyone, ‘If you have surgery you’re finished.’ My attitude now is, if it’s not working and you can fix it, what’s wrong with that? If you don’t fix it, you can’t run anyway. If you do, maybe you can. I’m so grateful to these guys (surgeons). Without orthopedic medicine I would not still be running. I couldn’t even think about racing, or even going for a run.”

She was unable to compete in the Olympics in 1980 because of the U.S boycott, and unable to run against the world’s best in Los Angeles in ’84 because of the retaliatory Soviet boycott. In Seoul in ‘88, slowed by a virus in the weeks before the Games, she finished 10th in the 3,000. In ‘92, she failed to make the U.S. team.

Slaney’s biggest achievement might have been her double world championship in ‘83, when she beat the Soviet’s best in one of the greatest East-West confrontations.

“I was an underdog, so to speak,” said Slaney, who later added that “one thing I say with pride is that everything I’ve done has been drug-free.”

But the moment that is remembered will always be what happened at the Coliseum after Budd drifted to the inside and Slaney’s right foot struck Budd’s left calf, eventually sending Slaney tumbling.

When Sports Illustrated recently published 40 years of pictures, one of them was of Slaney’s agonized face after the fall.

“Oh well, I suppose I’ll always get an opportunity to see it,” Slaney said. “I assume going into ’96 we’ll see it a lot.

“My attitude has always been that it’s unfortunate it happened. Then again, my life could be quite different than it is now. Maybe I wouldn’t want to run, or at least compete. Maybe I wouldn’t have the same desires.”

Maybe she would. Even now, though she knows she will one day retire from competition, it is hard to imagine it.

“Even after ‘96, if things go well, why would I stop if things are going well?” she said. “There are road races and other meets, not just the Olympics. I just like the sport. The Olympics, sure they’re important, but it’s not the only thing. I’m not doing this because I feel like I have to do it. I’m doing it because I like it.”