Mary Slaney

[400guy1]

Re: Mary Slaney

Gee Realist...how did you know. First of all, I was saying what a top notch coach said. Second, I ran a 48.02 this season at 27. Not world class, but faster than Slaney you jerk. Grow up.

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

the truth is Slaney never did learn how to run a tactical race. In that trials race she did cause the contact with Rudolph. Then she has to look all around as if saying, hey I got bumped. That's how it works, Mary. There is contact in races. She always seemed surprised that someone would bump or crowd her and she seemed completely incapable of running in close quarters. She caused the contact with Rudolph and then appeared to wait for someone to call a foul. People get bumped and shoved and crowded every day in distance races but Slaney never learned how to handle it.

[dj]

Re: Mary Slaney

I always thought the real loser in the LA 3000 was Maricica Puica, who ran very well but will always be thought of as having won a tainted race. My suspicion is that Puica would have won if everyone had stayed on their feet.

Remember that the Mary we saw in '84 wasn't the same as in '83. She couldn't pull of the 3000/1500 double at the Olympic Trials, losing the 1500 in a thrilling, classic race to Ruth Wysocki.

Mary also wasn't the same runner in '84 that we saw in '85, when she dominated the European season for nearly two months, not just a single week as she did in Helsinki in '83.

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

>I always thought the real loser in the LA 3000
>was Maricica Puica,

--WHO??




(Just kidding, I totally agree.)

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

mmmm - I have mixed feelings about Mary Decker Slaney. I saw her run 2:00 indoors as a 14 yr old. Unbelievable. I think she was one of the great talents in track ... in track, not personality - which I only heard about, never witnessed. I WAS surprised she never quite 'got there', which I'm guessin she knew as well.

84 Oly 5k, I thought, was hers to lose - and the only real chance she had at victory (it wasn't a gimme tho - a la Puica). I also think 'pack running' victims are almost always created by the individual - she shouldn't have been there - mental or circumstantial error - I felt bad for her, but it was preventable.

Not many Mary Deckers but alas - many Mary Slaneys.

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

84
>Oly 5k, I thought, was hers to lose - and the
>only real chance she had at victory (it wasn't a
>gimme tho - a la Puica

I'm sure you mean the 3k. Only thing is, it really WASN'T "hers to lose"...it just seemed that way after the 83 Worlds.

Before the first Worlds meet in 1983, there was only the Games every four years as any kind of world-scope championships. Under this international schedule, the Soviet distance runners were on a two-year training/racing/resting cycle as far as periodization. They were looking for their racing best on even numbered years, especially that fourth year when The Olympic Games, the Eastern Bloc system's propaganda bread and butter payoff, were held on the international stage for all to see.
When the first Worlds meet came about, many athletes and coaches were still a little hesitant about just how important a meet it would be, remembering the idea that the World Cup (started in the late seventies) was supposed to be designed to be a better world-scope championship than the Olympics but didn't amount to much in that respect. As such, many chose to not mortage the farm training and racing-wise for the unproven product, although most truly hoped the meet would be what it indeed turned out to be, that year and in years to come. Many western athletes did their usual "get sharp and race the circuit" plan, choosing the bird in the hand bucks and travel to the risk of the later benefit of "winning the big one," Olympic Games style (Viren).
Almost everything good enjoyed in the present can be traced to the work done in the past. Thanks to the previous few years of self career-denying help of her former husband Ron Tabb and tailored-for-her coaching of Dick Brown and finanacial/medical support of Athletics West, the 1983 Worlds found Decker healthy and fit, finally racing consistantly at the highest level. The Soviets, while definitely fit and having modified the training cycle, had not completely treated the Worlds as The Games. Several other western athletes, as mentioned above, had the same perspective (though mostly males making money on the usual circuit).
Decker was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of her speed, strength, and consistant health, as far as the field. And all credit to her for doing so.
The next year, Decker lost the health part of the equation by having yet another nagging injury--something at the very least damaging psychologically to her (why she didn't lead quite so fearlessly in LA as she had in Helsinki?). The Soviets had boycotted [God, for those of us who lived through three of those in our Track lives, it is absolutely loathsome to even WRITE that word!], aborting their two-year/four-year peaking cycle. But the rest of the world--the Pucica's, the Wendy Sly's, the West German woman (whose name escapes me right now), etc--the people who had spent 1983 doing special things for 1984, training at altitude, gearing up for LA, etc., *THESE* people were now ready. Even healthy, Decker was not a guarantee to anyone but the American media. Now, with an injury...

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

I saw the '84 Oly race (seated on the straight about 30 yards back and 15 rows up of where the collision occurred) in which Mary Decker Slaney was tripped-up by Zola Budd, who was not quite on the pole but veering out. Zola Budd's running "style" was that of a prehistoric cavegirl.
Budd was first disqualified, but later "reinstated" by the gutless Oly race officials.

Decker's "fault" was A) not immediately getting up and back on the track, B) crying, C) later being carried off by her boyfriend/husband. The latter two "faults' have driven the media and "purists" crazy, many of whom disliked her coming into the L.A. Games and loathed her after.

My initial reaction on that night in 1984 was to rush out and throttle Zola Budd. Nineteen years later and that reaction still holds. If you want to see real whiners and totally self-absorbed cheats, just look at any professional sport over the last 20 years.

[Truth Squad]

Re: Mary Slaney

I guess you didn't watch the replay, which showed pretty clearly that if anyone was at fault, it was Mary.

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

It's crystal clear that Slaney caused the accident. Can't trip someone when you are in front as Budd was. The truth is that Slaney ran up the backside of Budd. Watch the video. Watch Budd's leg go flying out to the side after Slaney has stepped on Budd. Watch it all over again umpteen years later in Atlanta when she can't handle the traffic in the trials in '96. The woman never learned how to race in a crowded situation.

[Guest]

Re: Mary Slaney

>the media and "purists", many of
>whom disliked her coming into the L.A. Games and
>loathed her after.

The media--the ones that annointed her "Queen Mary" and put her everywhere, from life-size Kodak cut-outs to almost every magazine cover?????

The purists, who continually bit their tongues and overlooked her whiny self-centeredness because she (at the time) wasn't obviously on some drug protocol like the Eastern Bloc women????

Take the rose-colored glasses and revisionist history some place else, Mr. Limbaugh!