The two main actors in one of the biggest dramas at the 1984 Los Angeles Games recently reunited to film a documentary chronicling their controversial race.
American Mary Decker, 26, was the gold-medal favorite in the women’s 3,000m race, and she was expected to be challenged by Zola Budd, an 18-year-old barefoot runner from South Africa who controversially received British citizenship earlier that year. She applied for the citizenship on the basis of her grandfather being British because South Africa at the time was banned from the Olympics due to apartheid.
Decker led most of the way, but about halfway through, she tripped over Budd’s feet.