Those were the boldest brush strokes of her narrative, and they continue to be. “They’re in a box somewhere in South Africa, I think.” She says the happiest moments of her life occurred when her children were born. And there was Jenny.
There were photographs of the missing baby all over the house and every year during holidays and on little Frank’s birthday, Tossie grew quieter, and sadder. She apologized to her idol. She can’t imagine not running. But the full impact of the situation didn’t hit her until she’d completed another lap and saw Decker stretched out on the ground, wailing. More coaches watched her, and for at least one of them, and maybe more, who beheld her curly hair, and her speed, and the way she had that little hitch in her style—elbows slightly too high, a little too wide—there was something familiar. There were snow-white chickens her father bred and sold, and a water-pumping windmill. A lot of people thought she had disappeared and stopped running for good. Now more coaches were looking at her, a curly haired, middle-aged woman, legs like pistons, elbows flying. The BBC televised the 3,000-meter event, which Budd won in 9:02.06. And it wasn’t her narrative. People booed her. “She was such a shy and introverted person,” says Cornelia Burki, a South African-born distance runner who had moved to Switzerland in 1973 and represented that country in the 1980, 1984, and 1988 Olympics. But her parents divorced in 1986, and then she had absolutely no contact with her father. She was slowing down.
She was decimating their college athletes.
Tossie and Zola had to comply with his will, so they couldn’t attend the funeral. Puica and Sly passed Budd, but she passed them back. Fatherless, motherless, Budd has run through it all, elbows a little too high, a little too wide, and most of the world didn’t know, or care, and that made the running something better, something closer to what she had when she was young. She was still in high school and her normal childhood was just a blurry story, one that would be embellished and twisted and disfigured the more it receded into the past. Frank and Tossie’s relationship, never placid, grew more turbulent. Frank Budd was greedy, and pushy, and that fit into a simple story, but he was other things, too. (She has recently taken up mountain biking.) She treasures the moments of her childhood when no one was pushing her, before she had discovered her gifts, before the world had discovered them and adored them and twisted them to its own purposes. Officials disqualified her from the race (and an hour later, after reviewing the videotape, rescinded the disqualification). The family received a two-year visa to live in the United States last year. Her name is in the lyrics of a song once popular in her homeland. The world doesn’t know that he constructed a little duck pond for his youngest child, and that she would tell him stories about how she took (continued on page 108) care of the ducks, that she fed them just like he told her to, that father and daughter loved each other and were happy, once upon a time before the world discovered her gifts, before the gifts became so heavy. Some of the coaches looked at each other.
Last year, she entered the New York City Marathon and ran 2:59:51. Why was she running now? No, she says, she never quit running, just competing. Running brought her international fame and then worldwide scorn and then it brought her something few might suspect. The reliable, long-distance jitneys in her hometown are called “Zola Budds” or just “Zolas.” She doesn’t display any of her old medals. But that’s not why she’s running. I was excited to learn that the local ultra club, the Darkside Running Club, would be having a real barefoot running icon competing in their Peachtree City 25K/50K, and I would have the opportunity to meet her! As far as the world was concerned, she stopped running. She competed at the 1984 Olympic Games for Great Britain and the 1992 Olympic Games for South Africa, both times in the 3000 metres. Zola Budd (right) and Mary Decker (left), seen as rivals for more than 30 years, come face-to-face for the first time, three decades after Mary fell in an Olympic race against Zola Running had been fun for the curly-haired athlete once, a long time ago, and then it had saved her when she needed saving most, and then it had almost destroyed her before she was even an adult. It was so unlike Frank’s death in 1989. I thought, Just get in this Olympics and get it over with.” In the highly awaited 3,000-meter final, Decker set the pace, followed closely by Puica, Budd, and England’s Wendy Sly. “The nurses told me the kid’s a stayer,” Frank, always good for a quote, would tell reporters years later, before things got ugly.
Bob Thomas / Getty Images; Mike Powell / AllSport / Getty Images But things were always more complicated than that. She smiles.
Zola was walking in front of me, apologizing. “If you’re running barefoot,” she says, “it’s best to be last or in front.”) “I saw what happened,” says Burki, who finished fifth in the race. She barks a heavy laugh, as if that’s the most ridiculous question she has ever entertained, in a lifetime of entertaining ridiculous questions. It took a terrible toll on him.” Today she says, “If he had been around now, he could have been more open about who he was.” The intimate details that the world knows about Frank Budd are largely due to Zola’s fame.
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