Mary Decker Slaney (neé Mary Teresa Decker), turns 50 today.
At 15, Mary Decker was a world record holder. In 1982, she set six world records in distances ranging from the mile to the 10,000. In 1983 she won double gold at the world championships in Helsinki. 1983 would turn out to be the high point of here career. It was in 1983 that she was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the year.
In 1984, her career took a nasty turn as she famously collided with Zola Budd in the Olympic 3000m finals in Los Angeles, ending her best chance for an Olympic gold. she didn't help her image by publicly blaming Budd, a teenager running one of her first international races, for the fall. It was her Nancy Kerrigan moment, and it wasn't pretty.
In the late 1980's and early 1990's, Slaney's training and racing was affected by the many injuries she sustained. She failed to make the Olympic teams in 1988 and 1992. But in 1996, at age 37, she once again qualified for the Olympics, this time in the 5000m. However, a urine test taken at the Olympic Trials showed an unusual -- and illegal -- ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. Slaney claimed this was the result of the birth control pills she was taking. The controversy went on for years, with the IAAF banning Slaney from competition, and the USATF supporting her.
In 2003, Slaney was inducted into the USATF Hall of Fame. Her PR's are still amazing to contemplate:
800 m - 1:56.90
1,500 m - 3:57.12 (American record)
1 mi. - 4:16.71 (American record)
3,000 m - 8:25.83 (American record)
5,000 m - 15:06.53
10,000 m - 31:35.30
Not only do these marks show amazing, Said Aouita-like range (1:56 to 31:35 is incredible), twenty-five years later, these marks would still put her near the top of the world.
2 comments:
Impressive marks indeed, but the drug cloud lingers and taints anything associated with her. Cheaters should not be idolized.
While they should not be idolized, in my opinion there are a great number of athletes on the world-stage that are probably guilty of some kind of performance enhancing drug. There have been far too many convictions in the last 5-10 years for me to believe that the vast majority of world-class endurance athletes be it runners or cyclists are clean. If you assume that many world beaters are guilty of some kind of illegal assistance it doesn't take away from the fact that one cheater's performances are FAR and AWAY better than everyone else's.
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