"I Can't Take It Anymore"

By David Brand

She could run like a gazelle, the symbol of her native South Africa, her lanky gait propelling a diminutive body. But Zola Budd, 21, was never able to run away from her ties to her country and its racial policies. Last week she gave up trying, and tearfully returned to her hometown of Bloemfontein, stating sadly, "I have lost my love for athletics." Her homecoming blocked any chance of an Olympic appearance in Seoul and seemed to end the career of one of the world's best women distance runners.

Budd popped up in world headlines four years ago, a slip of a girl running barefoot across the South African veld. She had taken 6.5 seconds off the women's 5,000-meter world record, but the 112-lb., 5-ft. 4-in. teenager's time was not officially recognized because South Africa's athletes are in the shadow of a worldwide antiapartheid ban.

Shortly after, she was spirited into Britain by a London tabloid, and in only 13 days she was granted citizenship on the basis that her grandfather was an Englishman. This made Budd eligible to join Britain's Olympic team, but it earned her hostility from British runners and from opponents of apartheid. The trouble was that the shy, introverted athlete refused to reject her homeland's racist policy.

But she made it to the Los Angeles Games, and there disaster struck spectacularly when Budd collided with American Mary Decker during the 3,000 meters. Booed off the track (though she was later exonerated), the South African fled to Bloemfontein. She returned to Britain in 1985 to break the world record in the 5,000 meters; she also won the World Cross-Country Championships in 1985 and 1986.

The protesters kept after her. She planned to compete in the World Cross- Country Championships in New Zealand this year but withdrew after the British team was threatened with suspension. Last month she was accused of participating in a 1987 track meet outside Johannesburg. Even though she did not compete, the International Amateur Athletic Federation recommended that the British suspend her from international competition for at least a year, or face an Olympic ban themselves.

"The tension just got too much for her," said Budd's mother. "She couldn't sleep, didn't want to sleep." Sports Surgeon Ken Kingsbury, who examined Budd, confirmed she was "in a bad way -- she was sweating a lot, had headaches and a raised pulse." Back home, Budd complained, "I have been made to feel like a criminal. I have been continuously hounded, and I can't take it anymore."

"Zola has been a political pawn and sacrificed to the African states," said Olympic Sprinter Allan Wells, one of her few British friends. Others felt that Budd was not without blame. Tony Ward, a spokesman for the British Amateur Athletic Board, insisted that her adoption of Britain had been prompted by "ambition and greed." Through it all, "people tended to forget that she was a highly strung girl -- any long-distance runner is as finely tuned as a violin," said British Coach John Bryant. Finally, it seems, the taut string has snapped.

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London and | Guy Hawthorne/Johannesburg