Mary Decker-Slaney - The Unfulfilled Dream, Part 4

Some of the greatest athletes of the world have tried in vain to win an Olympic gold medal. We portray them in this series.

Olympic gold has eluded many athletes, but probably none in such a dramatic fashion as Mary Decker-Slaney. Her collision with Zola Budd in the 3000 meters final at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics had the proportion of a Shakespearean tragedy. It was not just bad luck of a stellar athlete. On this Friday afternoon, August 10th, 1984, America's sweetheart, everybody's darling (especially the media's) had fallen from grace (picture: The Guardian).

To understand the whole drama, one has to remember the buildup. As perfectly portrayed in the ESPN documentary "Runner", Mary Decker had risen to stardom in running-mad America for years. She participated in her first marathon at the age of twelve, took the spotlight in the late 1970s and was tabbed by the media to become the world's best and surely most popular female athlete. But bad look became a steady companion for Decker. In later years, many injurys hampered her career. In 1980, she won the 1500 meters at the U. S. Olympic trials, but the boycott prevented her from perhaps picking up the gold in Moscow.

Nevertheless, the rise of Mary Decker-Slaney continued, culminating at the inaugral World Championships in 1983 at Helsinki, where she smashed the Soviet runners and won the gold both in the 1500 and 3000 meters. One year earlier, Sports Illustrated (picture) had put the world record holder on the cover - Decker had become a "hot commodity".

The stage was set for an Olympic triumph in 1984 at Los Angeles, and when the Eastern Bloc countries declared to stay home, there seemed to be just one person who could stop Decker-Slaney: 18 year-old Zola Budd from South Africa, who had gained British citizenship at the eleventh hour to become eligible for L. A.

The much hyped and anticipated duel lasted only a few laps. Then Decker-Slaney hit the heel of barefoot running Budd and stumbled to the ground. While America's TV audience watched in shock and Decker-Slaney sat crying beside the track, the race continued and Romania's Maricica Puica grabbed the gold with a totally unnerved Budd finishing merely seventh (picture: UK Sports Chat).

Decker first blamed Budd for her own failure, the British runner was disqualified, but shortly after reinstated. Anyway, everybody knew that on this day Decker-Slaney's best shot at an Olympic gold had gone for good. She never even came close to another. Four years later in Seoul, Decker-Slaney finished eighth in the 1500 and tenth in the 3000 meters final. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, she did not make it past the 5000 meters heats.

What remains from Decker-Slaney's later life is a positive drug test in 1996 that was followed by a long legal battle and finally a suspension. The confrontation with Budd is history that even the two protagonists have put behind themselves. 32 years after "the fall", Mary Decker-Slaney and Zola Budd-Pieterse met at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum again. They went for a jog - no bad feelings anymore (picture: The Guardian).

Jefferson Perez - The One and Only, Part 4

Some countries have won just one single gold medal in their Olympic history. We portray them in our series "The One and Only". One of them: Ecuador. 

Jefferson Perez is just 1.67 meters tall, but to his countrymen, he is the greatest. On the early morning of Friday, July 26th, 1996, Perez became the first and to date only Olympic champion from Ecuador, winning the 20 kilometers race walk at the Atlanta Summer Games (picture: iaaf.org).

Perez had dominated the race from the beginning, but it came at a high prize. "The shoe on my left foot was split in half and almost without a sole", Perez remembered 20 years later in an interview with Ecuadorian daily El Comercio. One kilometer away from the finish line, Perez finally got away from Russian Ilya Markov and Mexican Bernardo Segura and won the Gold by a margin of nine and 16 seconds.

When Perez entered the stadium, "It was a spiritual moment, I was in deep silence. I am Catholic and at the stadium gate I imagined Christ." At the same time, Ecuador was anything but silent. The whole country erupted with joy over her first ever Olympic Gold.

The career of Jefferson Perez had seen a lot of ups and downs and so it went on after Atlanta. At age 22, he was rather young for a race walker to become an Olympic champion. Perez had learned a lot from the Mexican race walkers and their coaches when he went to the country thanks to a scholarship in 1989. He won his first major international title at the 1995 Pan American Games in Mar del Plata. After this triumph, Perez wanted to build a new house for his mother in his hometown of Cuenca. "All the resources that came in, I gave for the construction. I had no money left to eat, and at the World Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, I was penultimate, because there were no resources left for my preparation."

With the status of a new national hero, Perez was able to vindicate his status as a world class race walker for years to come after 1996. From 2003 to 2007, he won three consecutive World Championships in Paris, Helsinki, and Osaka. He added another Olympic silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Games before retiring. His autobiography, "Nardo y los zapatitos de oro" ("Nardo and the Golden Shoes"), written by journalist Sandra López in 2009, sold over ten thousand copies. Today, Perez spends most of his time raising money for his foundation (picture: alchetron.com).

Franziska van Almsick - The Unfulfilled Dream, Part 3

Some of the greatest athletes of the world have tried in vain to win an Olympic gold medal. We portray them in this series.

The name of her homepage says it all: Franzi - to Germans it's as simple as that. Even at age 38, Franziska van Almsick is called by and famous for her teenage nickname. It has become a household brandmark all over the country, in TV spots and the yellow press. But "Franzi" means business: When she criticizes Germany's swimmers as a TV expert or works as a fundraiser for the national athletes help network Deutsche Sporthilfe, there is nothing sweetheart about the woman, who - as a teenage girl - became the country's first post-unfication sports icon.

Still, one dark spot remains in van Almsick's career: She never won an Olympic gold.

When van Almsick (picture: Augsburger Allgemeine), one last product of the GDR's youth sports development program, burst onto the international swimming scene in 1992, she was just 14 years of age. On the early evening of July 27th, she stood on the starting block for the finals of the 200 meters freestyle at the Barcelona Olympics, having qualified in the fastest time. The German media were already nuts about their new darling from Berlin after she had taken bronze in the 100 meters 24 hours before. There was a real chance that the little girl could take it all.

But it was not to be. Van Almsick swam ahead of the pack for almost 180 meters, but on the home stretch, she zigzagged a little through the pool, perhaps due to a lack of experience. In lane five, American Nicole Haislett sneaked by the German wunderkind and beat van Almsick by one tenth of a second.

Nobody would have expected that this was going to be the closest van Almsick would ever get to an Olympic gold. What followed was a career of high drama with a lot of titles, records and profits from commercials, but no Olympic gold.

After becoming world champion and world record holder at Rome in 1994, van Almsick was again considered a heavy favourite for the 1996 Atlanta Games. But again, she could not stand the pressure in her best event, losing the 200 meters to Costa Rica's Claudia Poll, who was of German descent.

Things got even harder for van Almsick four years later at Sydney. Out of shape and with visible overweight, she had no shot at a medal. A German tabloid called her "Franzi van Speck" and a "pig". She rebounded from the disaster with another world record at the 2002 European Championships in her hometown of Berlin, but finished only fifth in the 200 meters freestyle at the 2004 Athens Games. When she retired afterwards, she had collected ten Olympic medals - four silvers, six bronzes, no gold.

When asked about that missing gold in August 2016, the now mother of two had no regrets: "For my personality, it was very good not to have achieved something in life.  I am happy and thankful for the life I live, I have two healthy kids, a wonderful family, I live humble - and I surely do this because I did not fulfil my biggest dream in life." (picture: dpa)

Ghada Shouaa - The One and Only, Pt. 2

Some countries have won just one single gold medal in their Olympic history. We portray them in our series "The One and Only". One of them: Syria. 

The peaceful village of Simmern in the rural area of the German Rhineland is far away from war torn Aleppo or Damascus. It's the place where Syrias's only Olympic champion ever lives today. But Ghada Shouaa did not come as a refugee - as so many others of her compatriots did in the last two years.

When Shouaa won the heptathlon at the 1996 Atlanta Games, it came hardly as a surprise. The 23 year old former basketball international had won the World Championships in Gothenberg a year before and the famous meeting in Götzis, Austria prior to Atlanta. When U. S. heptathlon icon and gold medal favourite Jackie Joyner-Kersee had to quit after the opening 100 meters hurdles due to a hamstring injury, and Germany's former world champion Sabine Braun proved to be out of shape, the way for Shouaa was virtually free. She triumphed by a comfortable margin of over 200 points (picure: Alchetron).

Unfortunately, injuries were going to haunt her during the rest of her short career. In the autumn of the same year, she injured her back heavily while practicing the javelin. Shouaa had surgery in Koblenz, Germany and she joined the club USC Mainz to get back into shape. She won a bronze medal at the 1999 World Championships in Seville, but never regained the shape of the glory days of Atlanta.

While living in Mainz, Shouaa's coach was Thomas Kohlbacher. His girlfriend Birgit Dressel, also an Olympic heptathlete back in 1984, had died on April 10th,  1987, from wrong medication or - as some insiders argue until today - from a horrific mixture of different doping substances found in her body. Kohlbacher has stayed silent about the details until today. While she later stayed in Germany, Shouaa's career had been jump-started in the early 1990s by a Russian coach: Kim Bukhantsov, who had coached discus thrower Faina Melnik to Olympic gold at the 1972 Munich Games.

It is not known which side Shouaa took during the civil war in her home country. Some Arab media say she openly sumpathized with Assad's regime, but the sources for this claim are dubious. Other writers dwelled on how badly she had been treated by Syrian sports authorities. What we know is that Assad's father and then Syrian head of state Hafiz called her via phone to congratulate Ghada Shouaa on her Atlanta gold. She is not only Syria's only Olympic champion until today, but also one of the very few Arab women to succeed in top level sports. (picture: Getty Images).