How runners Mary Decker and Zola Budd drove women’s athletics forward

For an arena that bills itself as “the greatest stadium in the world”, the Los Angeles Coliseum is badly in need of a facelift. Large cracks caused by an earthquake that damaged the arena in 1994 are still visible. Many of the seats used by spectators at the 1984 Olympics are unchanged, and look weather-beaten after absorbing 32 years’ worth of intense Californian sun.

But while the arena is looking its age, one of the biggest stories of those Games – the clash between Mary Decker and Zola Budd in the women’s 3,000m – has stood the test of time. Thirty-two years later, it remains a much-debated incident – and the two athletes’ performances paved the way for a boom in women’s running.

Today it is not unusual for women to outnumber men at mass-participation running events, and this is partly thanks to the pioneering efforts of Decker and Budd. When they began running in the 1970s, the athletics world was dominated by male stars, but this soon changed as race promoters reacted to the rising interest in Decker and Budd in particular; women were no longer a sideshow, but now at centre stage.

They were the Seb Coe and Steve Ovett of the women’s running scene, but with richer back stories: their amazingly eventful careers encompassed divorce, suicide, allegations of doping, death threats and even murder. Then there was the politics, with South Africa-born Budd repeatedly targeted by anti-apartheid demonstrations.

After breaking multiple world records and winning double gold at the 1983 World Athletics Championships, Decker established herself as America’s greatest middle-distance runner – male or female. John Rodda, the long-time Guardian sportswriter, said Decker “stood alone in the 1970s and early 1980s as the western world’s single reply to the powerhouse of eastern European running. But for injury, she could have been the Muhammad Ali of women’s athletics”.

Budd was also a phenomenon, breaking Decker’s world 5,000m record aged 17 and later winning two world cross-country titles. But whereas Decker was outspoken, confident and glamorous, Budd was shy and tongue-tied before taking to the track with a hastily organised British flag on her singlet and, memorably, no shoes on her feet.

Their first clash at the Los Angeles Olympics saw Decker bite the dust after a split-second tangle of legs with Budd as the pair battled for the lead. But they went on to race each other five more times, most notably with a series of grand prix clashes in Rome, Brussels and Zurich, plus a big-money showdown in London in 1985, for which Budd was paid an unprecedented £90,000.

Their rivalry captured the imagination of the world and inspired a generation of runners. Initially, Budd’s arrival from South Africa to England in 1984 was treated with resentment by some British athletes who felt she might steal their place in the GB team, but as time wore on they realised her presence acted as the catalyst for improved standards. Jill Boltz (née Hunter), a former world record-holder for 10 miles on the roads, says: “I had a photo of Zola on my fridge door for motivation. I thought she was amazing – running so fast so young and often in no shoes!”

When Decker and Budd began to make their mark, distance running for women was still in its infancy. The first Olympic marathon for women did not happen until 1984, and the longest track race at the Games was 3,000m. (This was at least a step up from 1932-1956, when the longest race was 200m.)

More than 30 years after their heyday on the track, Decker and Budd still hold national records for the mile. To illustrate her ambition, Decker even spoke during her career about a sub-four-minute mile being possible for women. In total she set 36 US and 17 world records, and was the only American to hold national records at every distance from 800m to 10,000m. And there was a reminder of Budd’s ability when, at the World Under-20 Championships in Poland earlier this month, her name flashed up as still being the holder of the world junior 3,000m record.

The barefoot bullet from Bloemfontein is also, of course, one of the best-known shoeless runners in history. Budd took to the track without any footwear long before minimalist running shoes became a craze, and even once stopped to take off her spikes during a world cross-country championships race.

“One abiding memory of Zola,” says Paula Radcliffe, “is of her stopping to remove her spikes while she was running for South Africa in the 1993 World Cross – and then coming flying past me barefoot! She was ahead of me early in the race, then stopped at the end of the first lap or the beginning of the second, untied and removed her shoes and then flew past me to finish fourth.”

Ten years later, Radcliffe smashed the world record for the marathon in London with a time (2hr 15min 25secs) faster than any Briton, male or female, managed that year. Coincidentally, Budd was in the same race, and before the event had joked that Radcliffe would be showered, changed and on the way home before she even completed the distance.

As it turned out, Budd did not finish, dropping out with six miles to go. But by then it did not matter. Her legacy as one of the greats in women’s athletics was already secure thanks to her titanic clashes with Decker in the 1980s.

• Jason Henderson is the editor of Athletics Weekly and the author of Collision Course – the Olympic Tragedy of Mary Decker and Zola Budd, published by Birlinn

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