Two middle-aged women run together. They’re in a magnificent stadium, but it’s empty. They’re not competing against each other, they’re jogging slowly, chatting as they run. Perhaps a little awkwardly, understandably.
Thirty-two years ago, in the same stadium in Los Angeles, the same women did run against each other, competitively, in the Olympic 3,000-metre final. The race didn’t end well. There was a collision: one of them fell, didn’t finish the race, and was carried out of the stadium in tears. She didn’t waste time pointing the finger of blame at the other, who did finish, but a miserable seventh. The latter was booed out of the stadium. They were – they are – Mary Decker and Zola Budd.
This remarkable documentary The Fall: Decker v Budd (Sky Atlantic) is the story of that race – and of the women whose lives were defined and indelibly scarred by it. It takes in other stories: an American dream, apartheid-era South Africa, the British tabloid press and chequebook journalism. It has naivety and misunderstanding, personal tragedy for both parties, family problems, difficult fathers, broken dreams. The running is fuelled by anger and blind ambition. The runners’ lives are divided into strange four-year cycles, with big highs and even bigger falls.
The Fall has brought them together again. So the story ends, movingly, with some kind of truth, and with reconciliation. And they are suddenly more recognisable, more like their younger selves, now they’re running – however slowly – than when they were being interviewed. Decker says she has arthritis and orthopedic issues, but there’s still more than a hint of that languid, graceful urgency. And Budd still shuffles in her awkward, slightly mechanical, elbowy way. Budd gets the gold for graciousness, though. I’m not sure Mary Decker is 100% over it. Perhaps a little more time is needed.
