Word: budd
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...Zola Budd competes today in the final women's 3000-meter race at the Los Angeles Olympics. A white native of South Africa, the 17-year-old runner will represent Great Britain, her grandfather's birthplace. The objections raised this spring when Budd relinquished her South African affiliation have faded, edged out of the spotlight by larger considerations. The International Olympic Committee has ruled that Budd's hastily-acquired British citizenship satisfies its requirements, and in the shadow of the Soviet-bloc boycott of the Games, interest in Budd's bid for Olympic gold has focused on today's showdown...
...fact that the soft-spoken teenager's presence on the British squad may have kept one or two native Britons off the team has gone almost overlooked in this country, but not there--and certainly not in South Africa. Budd's presence in Los Angeles, combined with naturalized citizen Sydney Maree's spot on the U.S. track team, indicates that natives of South Africa can overcome the barriers erected by the apartheid state's exclusion from international competition...
...last month's trials, winding up four preliminaries and two finals over just six days, Decker finished second in the 1,500, her first loss in four years. Reasoning that "one gold is better than two silvers," she has elected a showdown with South African Sprite Zola Budd, though Decker claims to be more concerned about Rumanian Marciana Puica. In the Helsinki world championships last summer, Decker won both, running Soviet Zamira Zaitseva into the ground. Boycotters Zaitseva and Tatyana Kazankina would be missed more in Los Angeles if that picture were not so fresh and fabulous...
...Budd's qualification for the Olympics shows that the political hurdles are surmountable. It proves that some day the Games can be free of politics and be held for competition's own sake...
Hooray for the young barefoot runner from South Africa, Zola Budd [SPORT, June 18]! She epitomizes the modern athlete who must deal with political strife and product endorsements and still concentrate on performance. She is handling her trials bravely and has risen above her peers with well-deserved recognition...