Going full circle: Zola Budd is back to running barefoot on SA tracks

Nearly 40 years after she stunned the globe with a near mythical 5,000m performance in Stellenbosch as a wispy teenager, Zola Budd’s athletics career has come full circle and the local icon is back at home, running barefoot again in the Western Cape.

Following multiple sojourns overseas, Budd has returned to South Africa to settle down, and though she is no longer the sprightly, nervous young woman who shook the distance-running world with her spectacular results on the track, she is still doing what she does best.

Juggling roles

Between juggling her multiple roles as a student, coach and mother, Budd can even be seen among the masses these days at local road races in and around Cape Town.

“It’s nice to still be able to come out and challenge myself,” she said after completing the recent Spar Grand Prix 10km race in 42:21, finishing fifth in the masters (50-59) age group.

“I enjoy participating with other people, rather than just running on my own, and it gets me out the house.”

ALSO READ: SA athletes must ‘work together’ to bridge the gap, says Broodryk

Competing in Stellenbosch in January 1984, Budd clocked 15:01.83 to set an unofficial world record in the 5,000m event, and while this result was not ratified as South Africa was banned from international competition at the time, she soon had the chance to spread her wings.

Though most SA athletes were confined to local races, with the foreign door closed in reaction to the persistent Apartheid regime, Budd’s father took advantage of his ancestory and the British government fast-tracked her application for citizenship in order for the 18-year-old prodigy to represent Great Britain at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

So it was that she found herself on the track at the start of the Olympic women’s 3,000m final, representing what was still to her a foreign country in a place where nobody spoke her home language.

And it was in this strange environment that months of controversy and uncertainty converged on a point of collapse, and the Bloemfontein-born youngster looked on helplessly as the world crumbled at her feet.

In what is one of the most infamous incidents in the history of international athletics, Budd’s heel clipped American athlete Mary Decker, who was running behind her, and the US favourite fell to the side of the track in a shower of tears.

While Budd continued to the end, ultimately finishing seventh, she was booed around the track and later blamed for ending the medal hopes of Decker, the home crowd favourite and America’s darling.

Though she went on to shine in the colours of her adoptive nation, winning the world cross country title in 1985 and 1986, and setting an official 5,000m record of 14:48.07, she wasn’t quite able to reach the heights that were expected of her on the track.

Budd eventually decided to return home, and after South Africa’s readmission in the early Nineties, she went on to compete in the colours of her country of birth at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She also finished fourth in SA colours at the World Cross Country Championships in Spain the following year.

Moving to the US

Ironically, after the criticism she received in America during her peak, Budd later opted to settle in the US where she and husband Mike Pieterse raised their three kids and she coached on the collegiate circuit in South Carolina.

“It doesn’t feel like we ever really left. We didn’t even sell our house,” says Budd.

“We initially decided to go to the US for two years but then the kids settled there.

“Last year, all our kids had graduated, so my husband said: ‘Great, we can go back now.”

Returning home after her latest 13-year stint living abroad, Budd has now linked up with former rival and fellow icon Elana Meyer and her Endurocad Academy, coaching children through a scholarship programme at Stellenbosch High School.

Having settled in the picturesque town of Stellenbosch, with her own children having left the nest, 56-year-old Budd is also now using her extra time to study for her doctorate in education administration and management.

And now that she is finally home once again, she hopes to give back to the sport which molded her life – the good and the bad – by sharing her passion for running with the youth in the same place where she turned heads by delivering the fastest time in history with no shoes.

“I’m still able to run at my age because I put my ego in a plastic bag which I carry when I leave the house,” she says with a smile.

“I still run with the kids at the school. And yes, when we run on grass, I still run barefoot.”