Word: budd
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...race climaxed a year of hurt, bitterness and self-examination for both runners. Immediately after their Los Angeles mishap, Budd had approached Decker, her childhood idol, to apologize, but the frustrated U.S. star dismissed her with a curt "Don't bother." For Budd, the waiflike wonder whose shoeless style and record-smashing times had drawn worldwide attention in the months before the Summer Games, the accident was a traumatic blow to an already turbulent career. She had come under fire for obtaining last-minute British citizenship in order to race in the Olympics and evade the antiapartheid ban on South...
...Budd returned home to South Africa, where her parents were in the process of separating. She announced she was giving up international competition, but soon changed her mind and in December returned to the European circuit. Some old foes were waiting. In the midst of a February cross-country race in Birkenhead, England, two antiapartheid demonstrators rushed into her path, forcing her to drop out. A month later she won the world cross-country championship in Lisbon by a stunning 23 sec. but raced erratically after that...
...Olympic accident had been anequally crushing blow to Decker, who missed the 1976 Olympics because of an injury and the 1980 Games because of the U.S. boycott. Her snappish treatment of Budd and "bad loser" TV interviews cost her public sympathy and probably a good deal of money in endorsement contracts. But during five months of recuperation and renewed training, she refueled her competitive fires. In January, in her first race after the Olympics, Slaney set a new world's indoor record for the women's 2,000 (5:34.52), and she turned in several other impressive performances this year...
Meanwhile, she moved quietly to assuage the bad feelings of last summer. In March she wrote a private note to Budd, saying, "I apologize for hurting your feelings." Though still insisting that Budd was in the wrong for cutting in, Slaney, in a TV interview earlier this month, accepted some of the blame for "not knowing how to handle the situation ... I should have let her know she was cutting in." For her part, Budd acknowledged that she may have cut in too quickly and made the startling assertion that she purposely lost the race after the collision because...
...race time last Saturday, the tentative efforts at reconciliation had put most of the bitterness behind them. Slaney wished Budd luck before the race, and afterward complimented her young opponent: "I think Zola ran a good race tonight. I'm glad that she was competitive." But tougher competition may still be waiting down the road. Among the top runners missing from Saturday's race was Rumania's Maricica Puica, who won the Olympic Gold Medal in 8:35.96, 3 sec. slower than Slaney's time last week. Budd, who had predicted before the race that she would lose, was glad...