Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day August 11th, 1984, runners Zola Bud and Mary Decker, square off in Los Angeles at the

Olympic 3,000 meter final.

Some highlights of the 84 Olympics, Carl Lewis won more track and field medals than any

other Americans since Jesse Owens, a Chinese athlete won a medal for the first time in those

summer games, which is kind of crazy considering how successful China has been in the years since. The Olympics

themselves were considered a financial success which is very rare. LA was

largely using existing infrastructure not sinking too much into the games themselves.

There was of course the boycott by Russia, this is the height of the Cold War, remember,

but actually if you kind of put yourself in that summer of 84 one of the most hyped up moments was that 3,000 meter final

The American Mary Decker was poised to win the gold and she'd been denied the chance to do that four years earlier because of the US boycott of the games in Russia

and then here was Zola Bud a South African runner who was running under the English flag which will get into into it had all sorts of implications and

then just with about three laps to go in the race there was a collision an

entanglement perhaps a tripping perhaps an intentional tripping. intentional tripping.

Bud and Decker's legs got tangled.

Decker, the favorite, the American went down.

Bud faded back, finished way back, and the two were kind of forever linked

because of this moment which is a

wild sporting moment of course but also there's this massive geopolitical context to

it all so let's talk about Bud for Stecker and the trip seen around the world. I don't know if that's something that I can

coin here or not. But people were watching this all around the world. So here to discuss as always

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