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Stirred by Benita Fitzgerald-Brown's victory in the women's 100-meter hurdles, the audience was ready for a main event, but unprepared for a drama deeper than a race. The pack holds no attraction for either Decker, 26, or Budd, 18, front runners in every sense. They would naturally fight for the lead, where they could ignore the jostling and bumping behind them. A half-stride ahead on the outside at the 1600-meter mark and in tight quarters with Decker, Zola was knocked first abobble and then akimbo (see box). Decker, meanwhile, could not have been flipped so unexpectedly if someone in the infield had stuck out a cane. Budd's left leg had angled out so oddly that she could not have done it voluntarily, much less intentionally. Bleeding from a spike hole in her left ankle, where Decker's foot had hit her, cowering from the booing, Budd dropped back to seventh.
Immediately, Referee Andy Bakjian, an American, ruled that she was disqualified, but the British appealed to an eight-member board, which swiftly reinstated her. After studying numerous television replays and discussing every known rule of track etiquette, nobody except Decker seemed absolutely sure there was a foul, let alone who committed it. Cornelia Buerki of Switzerland, also South African-born, had a respectable view from the back of the pack. "I would say it was Mary's fault," she said. "She was trying to pass Budd on the inside and spiked Zola's Achilles. Zola couldn't help anything because she couldn't see in the back of her head." Instantly, ABC Commentator Marty Liquori thought Budd's inexperience was the culprit, but he changed his mind the next day: "Both runners could have done something to avoid it. Both aren't blameless. Neither is guilty."
Not that it can be any consolation to her, but Decker never looked so attractively human. Her running expression is either vinegary or no expression at all, and there has always been an edge to her that seemed chilling. Trying to leave the field under her own power, crying as hard as she ever ran, Decker faltered before reaching the tunnel and was lifted up into Fiance Richard Slaney's arms. He is a discus thrower on the British team, and they are massive arms. Set down on a small flight of steps in the tunnel, she accepted condolences from all the other runners but one. "Don't bother," she told Budd, who once kept a photograph of Decker tacked on her bedroom wall, the one in South Africa. "Zola Budd tried to cut in basically without being ahead," said Decker, who added she would have pushed Budd but feared newspaper headlines and disqualification. "I should have pushed," she said. They will push each other in the future.
In the Olympics, where femininity is literally put to the test, the right to trudge 26-plus miles had been withheld from women until this year, when unsinkable Benoit, 27, of Maine and Andersen-Schiess, 39, of Switzerland came to opposite conclusions in the marathon. "I was extremely comfortable the entire way. It was a very smooth, happy, training-run atmosphere," said Benoit, whose 2-hr. 24-min. 52-sec. frolic was dramatic only in light of the arthroscopic knee surgery she underwent 17 days prior to winning the