The title could be hinting at a loss of innocence, and yet there was no innocence to be lost in the grubby world of 1980s Olympic sport. This gripping documentary shows how the rivalry of track stars Mary Decker and Zola Budd at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics can be greeted with nothing other than a wince: two young women caught in the cross-currents of politics, bad timing and bad faith.
America’s Decker was a brilliant runner but a petulant drama queen (tellingly, her insistence on talking about her injuries continues until the film’s dying seconds). South Africa’s Budd was a teenage star who ran in bare feet; she was cynically offered a contract by the Daily Mail, who paid money directly to Budd’s abusive father and secured her UK citizenship on the pretext of a British grandfather so she could bypass the apartheid boycott and compete for Team GB. Would a black runner have got those privileges?
With the Russians boycotting the Games in retaliation for the Americans pulling out of Moscow in 1980, the Budd/Decker grudge match was the only ideological game in town. The result was an unedifying, anticlimactic fiasco as Decker clattered to the ground after an apparent collision, screaming her rage at Budd – and poor bewildered Budd decelerated and lost, mortified by vengeful booing. The film reunites the women 30 years on, and it is a fascinating dramatic finale. Sports careers are managed more carefully nowadays and people can’t be turned into wholly owned subsidiaries of a newspaper’s promotional department. An intriguing look at the ugly, inglorious side to the Olympics.
