Did you ever run behind a slow pack? You get a trailing wind and a lot of body odor. – Steve Prefontaine
I got the axe at Nike shortly after Zola Budd tripped Mary in the ’84 Olympic Games. The world’s leading sports apparel company has never (to-date) issued any formal comment whatsoever re a possible connection between the two events.
Sitting in the stands at the Los Angeles Coliseum, I was first horrified and then saddened, then anger, disbelief, just as if I had fallen myself.
Which I shortly did. Pushed. Long drop. Depression.
Still sad about it.
I recently posted a picture [see above] by that legendary OGOR photog Jeff Johnson in a Facebook group.
Supposed to “Post your old running results, pictures and interesting stories to share with your running friends!”
The athlete was Mary Decker Slaney and I was struck curious by many of the comments.
“Not a fan. Drug Cheat 
.”
“Drug cheat, Race cheat, tripper, Cry baby.”
“your forgetting to mention Attention seeker.”
“Apologies you are so correct.”
Haters gonna hate, I thought.
But, can you imagine just how huge Little Mary might be in the social media/cable TV world we live in today???
She could provoke some emotions.
I responded with another photograph of a not so little Mary Decker.
And a piece I wrote about the nice lady, maybe January 1996.
“Interesting reading. Thanks for sharing.”
“Wins the Internet for most pointless and boring post of the week.”
I gave that comment a heart emoji ’cause obviously this guy needs some love.
“A few comments made about drugs and Salazar! But was world class at 14 years old ! A huge natural talent ! She glided across the track !”
“Lance Armstong was a huge talent as well.”
At age fourteen, Lance was also kicking ass and he couldn’t even spell ‘testosterone.’
Seem to remember sharing a doobie with Mary on a stoop outside a Spokane nightclub one early May ’80 night.
I didn’t spend any real time with her after 1985. In those circles I no longer ran.
Don’t really know what to say about much of what came later.
In 1982 the Mary Decker set six world records, at distances ranging from the mile run to 10,000 meters. She received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.
The following year she achieved the “Double Decker,” winning both the 1500 meters and 3000 meters events at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Her history of often easy wins in the United States left her tactical abilities suspect in Helsinki. Mary often chose not to run in the middle of a slow, stinky pack because so few athletes could keep up with her, a situation the Soviet runners thought to use to their advantage. Her wins against Soviet World Record holders proved a redemption of her tactical competitiveness.
After her double win she won the Jesse Owens Award from USA Track and Field and Sports Illustrated magazine named her Sportsperson of the Year.
Shortly before her World Championship victories, Decker improved her U.S. 1500 meters record to 3:57.12 in Stockholm on July 26, 1983. This record stood for 32 years until Shannon Rowbury ran 3:56.29 on July 17, 2015.
Distinctly remember a group of Nike executives start the work week by celebrating replays of her World Championships triumphs. Again and again you watch, knowing the results, still somewhat incredulous. You can’t believe she will win but she guts it out every time.
Guts. A little girl and then a young woman in the spotlight.
That’s the Mary Decker I knew.
The 1984 Olympic incident
Decker was heavily favored to win a gold medal in the 3000 meters run at the 1984 Summer Olympics. In the final, barefoot runner Zola Budd of Great Britain, ran side by side with Decker for three laps and moved ahead. In an attempt to pressure Budd, Mary remained close by. Decker, in the briefest blink of a snippet of a women’s size 7, collided with the formerly banned South African and fell spectacularly to the curb, injuring her hip.
As a result, Mary did not finish the race, which was won by Maricica Puica of Romania (Budd finished seventh).
Decker was carried off the track in tears by her boyfriend (and later, husband), British discus thrower Richard Slaney.
At a press conference Mary said Budd was to blame for the collision. It’s the trailing athlete’s responsibility to avoid contact with the runner ahead. Among most distance runners, it’s understood the leader be a full stride ahead before cutting in.
International track officials initially disqualified Budd for obstruction, but she was reinstated just one hour later once officials had viewed films of the race.
Despite being behind Budd, Decker’s claim Budd had bumped into her leg was supported by a number of sports journalists. The claim was not accepted by the director of the games or the IAAF.
Decker and Budd next met in July 1985, in a 3000 meters race at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London, England. Decker won the race, and Budd finished in fourth place. After the race, the two women shook hands and made up.
Little Mary Decker later went on record as claiming she was unfairly robbed of the LA 3000 meters gold medal by Budd.
Many years after the event, the nice lady I knew offered the following mea culpa. “The reason I fell, some people think she tripped me deliberately. I happen to know that wasn’t the case at all. The reason I fell is because I am and was very inexperienced in running in a pack.”
Turns out exactly the same problem I had.
Decker’s successful 1985 season, winning twelve (12!) mile and 3000 meters races in the European athletics calendar, included a new official world record for the women’s mile of 4:16.71 in Zurich (Natalya Artyomova’s 4:15.8 in 1984, not being ratified by the IAAF).
That race in Zurich also matched her with both of the other principal competitors from the Olympic final, Slaney vanquishing both Puica and Budd who themselves ran times that until July 9, 2017 also ranked in the top 10 of all time.
I finally got a marketing position with Fred Meyer by August 1985. About half what I made on Murray Boulevard.
Interviewed a shoplifter who made $400,000.00 per year. More than our CEO. With our stolen merchandise.
Mary sat out the 1986 season to give birth to her only child, daughter Ashley Lynn (born May 30, 1986), then missed the 1987 season due to injury. She qualified for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, competing at 1500 meters and 3000 meters, but finished in 8th and 10th respectively, failing to win a medal. She did not qualify for the 1992 Games.
And I wasn’t in touch nor paying attention. I get like that sometimes.
So I missed this.
Doping Controversy
I had my reasons.
I was told Mom & Dad were both near death – Dad lasted another seven years and my mother, God bless her, stuck around and stuck around for eighteen more but that’s another story.
Now that I think about it, it was Mom and Dad who told they were near death.
Probably should’ve gotten a second opinion.
I drove a orange 1973 Bullnose Jeep Commando from Portland, Oregon to Venice, Florida, completely across the entire Lower Forty-Eight, where I got a part-time job bagging groceries for $4.50 an hour.
Who says I am not humble?
I quit running.
Quit writing, too.
Kinda disappeared.
The performance-enhancing drug I needed was money and I was always jonesing.
Couldn’t be who I thought I could still be.
Should be.
Am.
Parents are ill, could pass on any moment, now you’re on the stock crew, everybody half your age, working odd hours, heat and humidity making nuns swear out loud.
Still sad about it.
In 1996, at the age of 37, as No-Longer-Little Mary Decker qualified for the 5000 meters at the Atlanta Olympics, a urine test taken in June at the Olympic Trials showed a testosterone to epitestosterone (T/E) ratio greater than the allowable maximum of six to one. At the time of the positive test Decker was being coached by Alberto Salazar.
Decker and her lawyers contended the T/E ratio test is unreliable for women, especially women in their late 30s or older who are taking birth control pills. In the meantime, Decker was eliminated in the heats at the Olympics.
In June 1997, the IAAF banned Decker from competition. In September 1999, a USATF panel reinstated her. The IAAF cleared her to compete, but took the case to arbitration. In April 1999, the arbitration panel ruled against her, after which the IAAF – through a retroactive ban, even though she was cleared to compete – stripped her of a silver medal she had won in the 1500 meters at the 1997 World Indoor Championships.
In April 1999, Decker filed suit against both the IAAF and the U.S. Olympic Committee which administered the test, arguing that the test is flawed and cannot distinguish between androgens caused by the use of banned substances and androgens resulting from the use of birth control pills. The court ruled that it had no jurisdiction, a decision that was upheld on appeal.
The (T/E) ratio test has seen its standards tightened to a 4:1 ratio, instead of the previous 6:1 ratio, and laboratories now also run a carbon isotope ratio test (CIR) if the ratio is unusually high.
Right there, that’s my problem in a nutshell – my normal ratio is unusually high.
And I will always love Little Mary Decker.
Some Michael Jackson music, Mel Gibson as Braveheart, too.
Miramax films still good.
Al Franken.
Woody Allen, not so much.
Still sad about all that.
The Top 10 Running Doping Scandals of All Time
Cyclists aren’t the only juicers.
Presenting the top 10 running doping scandals of all time.
By ERIN BERESINI MAY 25, 2011 for PodiumRunner.com
In light of the recent news that (just about) every cyclist on the planet has either admitted to doping or accused someone else of injecting, ingesting or rubbing performance enhancing drugs into their bodies, we are sadly reminded that cyclists aren’t the only chemically enhanced athletes competing. Runners, too, have had their fair share of doping scandals. Below, the top 10 running doping scandals of all time:
1. Marion Jones
The 35-year old sprinter from Los Angeles won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, three gold and two bronze, becoming the American media darling of those Olympic games. But those medals were taken away after Jones admitted to taking steroids before the 2000 Olympic games, then lying to federal agents about her drug use. She was sentenced to and served six months in jail and a two-year suspension from competing in track and field. She retired from track and field in 2007, served her jail term in the middle of 2008 and traded track for basketball. She is currently a guard for Oklahoma’s WNBA team, Tulsa Shock.
2. Ben Johnson
The Jamaican-born Canadian became the pride of Canada in the mid-1980s after setting world records in the 60m and 100m sprints, often lining up next to Carl Lewis in the 100 meter event. After Johnson beat Lewis and set a new world record at the 1987 world championships in Rome, Lewis cried foul play. At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Johnson tested positive for steroids. He also admitted to using the drug before he set his 1987 world record. He was stripped of both medals and suspended from competing for two years. An attempt at a comeback in the early ‘90s was unremarkable, and Johnson tested positive for drugs again in 1999.
The 29-year old’s drug history started early. In 2001, he was banned from competition for two years after testing positive for amphetamines, but he appealed the decision, claiming that drug showed up in tests because of medication he had been on for attention deficit disorder since he was a kid. Gatlin won gold in the 100m sprint at the 2004 Summer Olympics, clocking in at 9.85 seconds. He also won bronze in the 200m and silver as a part of the 4x100m relay. In 2005, he won the 100m at the World Championships in Helsinki by the widest margin ever seen at that event. In 2006, he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and was sentenced in late 2007 to a four-year ban from athletics. He began competing again in 2010 with unremarkable results and can be seen regularly on SpikeTV’s reality show Pros vs. Joes.
4. Kelli White
The 34-year old sprinter from Oakland, Calif. won gold medals in the 100m and 200m events at the 2003 Paris World Championships. In 2004, her medals were taken away for testing positive for steroids, and she was banned from competition for two years. Like Marion Jones, White’s doping linked her to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) scandal that implicated dozens of top US athletes in taking steroids, including fellow sprinters Marion Jones and Regina Jacobs, and baseball player Barry Bonds. White retired in 2006.
The first middle-distance runner on the list! The former Stanford University runner from Los Angeles, now 47, represented the US at three summer Olympic games in 1988, 1992 and 1996, set the indoor world record in the 1500m and won 24 US championships in distances from the 800m to the 3000m. In 2003, she tested positive for using one of BALCO’s steroids and was suspended from competition for four years. She retired during that time and has since become a real estate agent in Oakland, Calif. Her silver medals in the 1500m from the 1997 and 1999 world championships were not taken away.
Seems like I was having brunch at the Waikiki Hawaiian Reef and watched her order breakfast. Fastidious eggwhite omelet. With barely dead vegetables.
6. Rashid Ramzi
The 30-year-old Moroccan won both the 800m and 1500m events at the 2005 World Championships, becoming the first person to win both events at the competition. Running for Bahrain at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Ramzi took home gold in the 1500m—the first Olympic medal Bahrain had ever won. But that medal was taken away after Ramzi tested positive for an advanced version of the red cell boosting drug EPO. His two-year ban from competition ended on May 2nd.
This 49-year old is the only Olympic-caliber marathoner from the US to have been found guilty of doping. In February of 2004, he ran a personal best of 2:15:36 at the Olympic trials in Birmingham, Ala. (Alan Culpepper won in 2:11:42; Hellebuyck didn’t make the team.) That same year, he tested positive for EPO in an out-of-competition test administered while he was preparing for the Olympic marathon trials. He was suspended from the sport for two years, but vehemently denied any wrongdoing during the suspension. During a 2010 interview with Runner’s World, Hellebuyck, who now coaches cross country and track teams in Tucson, Ariz., finally admitted to doping.
I met Eddie when he ran the first leg of Nike’s attack on the Hood-To-Coast Relay record. He was like two feet tall, perfect for falling down a mountain in the dark.
The first leg drops 2,000 feet. Remember the opening scene in the Stephen King movie “The Shining,” starring Jack Nicholson – the car climbing and climbing and climbing and winding up and up through the drifts of snow? That’s the road they are running down. In a word, steep; forbidding even in the summer. The record for the first mile is 3:44, and the guy was holding back.
Leg 1 is a rite of passage for most teams. A majority of the folks falling down the mountainside are first-timers – all quads, no brains. Rare is the athlete who does this leg voluntarily. Some teams, seeking an early lead, have been known to sacrifice their first runner; this means the second and third athletes will have to run four legs.
Fifty yards into this 195-mile race, Nike takes the lead. Fast Eddy Hellebuyck clocks a sub-4 opener. He sets a Leg 1 record, averaging 4:01:58 for 5.6 miles. At 5 feet, 2 inches, 105 pounds, the 2:11 marathoner is shaped like a water bug. “I am not a wimp,” the smiling Eddy tells me, after building the biggest lead coming off the hill anybody has ever seen.
8. Mary Decker Slaney
Early on, New Jersey native Mary Decker was a running sensation. At just 14 years old, “Little Mary Decker” won the 800m event at a US-Soviet meet. By the age of 16 in 1974, she held the world record in the 1000m and 800m events. She suffered from compartment syndrome throughout 1975, but made a strong comeback in the ‘80s, setting six world records in 1982 in distances from the mile to 10,000m. She was heavily rewarded, recognized as the top amateur athlete in the US in 1982, and Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year in 1983.
It wasn’t until 1996, at the age of 37, that Decker Slaney (she married British discus thrower Richard Slaney in 1985) got into doping trouble. She qualified for the 5000m at the Atlanta Olympics, but a drug test at the Olympic trials came up positive for testosterone. She was banned from competition in 1997. She fought the IAAF and the US Olympic committee, claiming the test was flawed and could’ve produced a false positive due to the use of birth control pills, but the ban was upheld. She’s currently retired and lives in Oregon.
9. Leonid Shvetsov
This two-time Olympian, Russian national record holder in the marathon and course record holder in the famous Comrades Ultramathon, was accused by none other than Hellebuyck (see #7) of using EPO. Not only of using the drug, but of supplying it to other marathoners training in Albuquerque for the ’96 Olympics. Shvetsov, who retired in 2009, denies any wrongdoing. He currently coaches Russian distance runners and operates an auto service business in Russia, Runner’s World South Africa reports.
10. Ma’s Army
In 1993, a Chinese squad of female runners coached by Ma Junren won six of a possible nine medals at the world championships in Stuttgart. Shortly thereafter, one of Ma’s runners took a 41.9 second chunk out of the 10,000m world record, though she ranked only 56th in the event a year earlier. Skeptics cried steroids, but before drug use could be verified, Ma’s runners mutinied, sick of his masochistic workouts and lifestyle demands. China withdrew six of Ma’s runners (in addition to 21 other members of China’s Olympic team) from the 2000 Sydney Olympics before they could compete, presumably because China feared the athletes would test positive for EPO.
Can you imagine if Little Mary Decker had won that Olympic Gold Medal and I hadn’t been fired, how much bigger Nike would be today? I am sure your mind – like mine – boggles.
Still sad about it.