In 1984, Canada’s Lynn Kanuka raced to Olympic bronze in the 3,000m. No one paid attention
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In the summer of 1984, the eyes of the athletics world were indeed glued to Mary Decker of the United States and barefooted South African-turned-Brit Zola Budd. Kanuka’s medal went largely unnoticed
Author of the article:
Dan Barnes 
Kanuka had run a world-leading 3,000-metre time in the weeks before the Olympics. Photo by Ronald Lee Article content
Unfolding in shadows cast by controversy, Lynn Kanuka’s Olympic bronze medal run went largely unheralded, but the long-retired Canadian distance runner has enjoyed her eight minutes and 42 seconds of fame many times over since that hot August evening in Los Angeles.
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“People still bring it up,” said Kanuka, now 61 and living in White Rock, B.C. “Every Olympic year it comes up; a race that was just this crazy thing that people still remember. They might not remember names and stuff but they’ll remember that American and that South African who ran in bare feet.”
In the summer of 1984, the eyes of the athletics world were indeed glued to Mary Decker of the United States and barefooted South African-turned-Brit Zola Budd, front-running rivals in the first ever Olympic women’s 3,000-metres. There were 10 other women in the field, including Kanuka who was then competing under her married name as Lynn Williams, as well as Romania’s Maricica Puica and Great Britain’s Wendy Sly, the eventual gold and silver medalists respectively.
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But all the pre-race headlines trumpeted the Decker/Budd showdown and its layers of political and athletic drama. The International Olympic Committee had banned South Africa for its racist apartheid regime, but English lineage and Fleet Street’s zeal for an underdog story set the British government’s wheels madly in motion and the teenaged Budd obtained a new passport in record time.
Decker won gold in both the 1,500m and 3,000m at the inaugural world championships in 1983 in Helsinki, positioning her as race favourite in L.A., where she grew up. Adding to the hype, Sports Illustrated named Decker sportsperson of the year, and put her smiling face on the cover of its Dec. 26, 1983 issue. The tribute piece inside detailed her many triumphs and struggles through a litany of injuries and accidents, and one paragraph provided goosebump-worthy foreshadowing.
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“Yet Decker does not seem to be classically accident-prone,” Kenny Moore wrote. “She is deft in movement and concentrates on what she’s doing. Rather, she seems, like Gus Grissom or Gerald Ford, one to whom Things Happen.”
Kanuka, on the other hand, flew under the radar en route to Los Angeles, but arrived full of confidence after a startling time trial run with her training group at Burnaby, B.C.’s Swangard Stadium a few weeks earlier.
“I was a newcomer on the international scene for sure, so nobody expected me to win a medal. I knew that I had the potential there, though. I knew because we’d run a huge time trial. It was unofficial, just a tester to give me confidence, and I broke what was my Canadian record at the time and I ran the fastest time in the world that had been posted so far. It was so exciting.”
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The BBC broadcast offered no hint of that potential, and when the race began, Kanuka ran comfortably mid-pack, all but invisible in the mad rush to document every step taken by Decker and Budd.
For more than four laps the pack was tightly bunched behind Decker, then all hell broke loose. Budd went to the front but only barely. Decker and Budd soon made contact, and Decker wobbled. Seconds later it happened again. Decker’s right foot hit Budd’s left, Decker staggered awkwardly, then fell over the inside rail of the track onto the infield.
“Decker’s down!” exclaimed the late BBC announcer David Coleman. “Oh, the world champion and one of the favourites is now flat out on the infield. Mary Decker out of the race. And little Zola Budd may have clipped in too soon. It may not have been her fault but certainly she seemed twice there to impede Mary Decker.”
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Budd also stumbled, but righted herself. Obviously concerned for the welfare of her heroine — whose poster adorned Budd’s bedroom — she looked back at a crumpled Decker, then switched her gaze to the open track. The shock of what happened seemed to sap her focus and strength and she was soon caught by Puica and Sly.
As if the bizarre scene needed a sound track, boos rained down from the crowd of 90,000. Fans acting as Hollywood script writers decided Budd was this movie’s villain, Decker the innocent victim, and a now tainted race lurched on without her.
It was so deafening, like there was foul play. I remember thinking, why are they booing? What’s up with that?
Lynn Kanuka
“Well this little girl’s career seems to be followed by nothing but controversy, and drama as well,” Coleman said of Budd, before the camera switched back to the prostrate Decker. “The golden girl of American running reduced now to not even watching the race but lying there in pain.”
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Kanuka, who was far enough behind Decker and Budd to stay out of harm’s way, couldn’t understand what she was hearing.
“At that point, even then all I remember is the crowd was booing and it was so loud. It had gone from this insane loud cheering to a booing, like when a really bad call happens in a hockey game. It was so deafening, like there was foul play. I remember thinking, why are they booing? What’s up with that?”
When Kanuka came back around to the home stretch, Decker was still on the infield, surrounded by people tending to her. That too was hard to fathom. Distance runners collide and fall all the time, but they usually get back up. American Joan Hansen had done exactly that earlier in the race.
“We came around and that was a shock too, there she was still writhing around on the ground,” said Kanuka. “It was like oh my gosh, she’s down. The American favourite is out of the race. That was insane.”
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American Mary Decker grimaces after falling in the 3,000 metres at the 1984 Olympics.
After all the pre-race hype, it was almost too much to process and Kanuka said she barely remembers the fifth and sixth laps around the Coliseum track.
“When I heard the bell ring for the last lap, that’s what woke me up. I remember literally telling myself to wake up. ‘Oh my gosh, Lynn, this is the final, get moving.’ Then I remember doing the things my coach (Doug Clement) taught me and the things I teach my athletes, focus on the task at hand, focus on your leg turnover, and if someone is in front of you, catch them.
“So one, two, three I caught. Then I looked up and saw Zola Budd was coming back to me and then I looked up further at the leaders down the track. ‘Oh my god, Budd is in third place, she’s coming back to me. If I get by her, I can win a medal.’ And by now I’m on the back stretch, there’s only 250 metres to go so I’m sprinting.”
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She powered through in 8:42.14, just .64 seconds ahead of American Cindy Bremser. Budd faded to seventh, was disqualified then reinstated after athletics officials reviewed the video. Decker was literally carried off the track by British discus thrower Richard Slaney, her then-boyfriend who is now her husband.
Did I wish she had gotten up? Maybe. Just because you wish that for athletes. But would I have stopped to help her up? No.
Lynn Kanuka
Because everything is bigger at an Olympics — personalities, drama or results — when an American sweetheart and world champ competing in her first Olympics is seemingly vanquished by an upstart whose home country was banned by the IOC, there’s no other story worth telling. In fact, Kanuka’s bronze medal was barely worth a mention from the BBC. Coleman noted Puica’s victory and Sly’s silver before adding “it looked like Lynn Williams of Canada” for third.
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There is no trace on the internet of the CBC TV call by the late Don Wittman.
“Years ago there was one,” said Kanuka. “I think they removed it because, I’m just going to say it, they made a huge mistake. They were watching all the commotion, right. There was so much going on with Mary Decker and Zola Budd and all of that. No one expected me to be in the mix. In their defence, I’m pretty sure they were watching an international feed in front of them on their monitor. When they looked up on the track, on the back stretch, they could see me. They said ‘oh my god, it’s Canada, it’s Wendy Williams.’ They said the wrong name. I remember them saying afterwards, once it ended, I remember those words from the commentator, ‘we did a disservice to Lynn. It’s Lynn Williams.’”
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The final results of the 1984 women’s 3,000-metre final.
CBC provided Postmedia with a 41-second clip of the broadcast sign-off, in which Wittman did indeed mistake Lynn for Wendy, but he immediately corrected himself.
Jennifer Madill, then Jennifer Meldrum, was Wittman’s colour commentator on the broadcast. She said Wittman missed the fall entirely and was scrambling.
“He was on the 200-metre side of the track and he didn’t see it. I don’t know whether he was looking at Lynn or what was happening, but he missed it. He would have killed me if I’d said that to anybody at the time.
“I was busy telling him to watch it (on replay). Then he suddenly picked up the call and I honestly don’t remember what he said at the end of the race.”
When Kanuka crossed the line, she almost immediately looked up into the crowd and made eye contact with Dr. Jack Taunton, a friend and mentor who looked after her sports medicine needs through several stress fractures prior to the Games.
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“Because of the number of injuries she’d had, she was nervous,” recalled Taunton, who came up with a plan to help Kanuka relax on the morning of the race. “I said OK Lynn, we’re going to go for an easy jog and then we are going to each have our hair cut together.”
He reserved side-by-side chairs at the Vidal Sassoon salon in the athletes’ village and the two of them got coiffed while talking about everything but the race.
“What was so amazing,” said Taunton, “as she crosses the line, she looks to the right, puts her hand up pointing at me and says ‘Jack, I like your hair.’”
He offered her his congratulations on winning one of Canada’s 44 medals at those Olympics. Almost four decades later, Kanuka still brings it out when asked to do a motivational speech for school kids. When added to Commonwealth Games gold in the 3,000m and bronze in the 1,500m in 1986, and world cross-country championships bronze from 1989, the collection prompted Canadian Running magazine to declare her Canada’s best ever female distance runner.
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“She could run indoor, cross-country, she could run on the roads,” said Paul Gains, a respected athletics figure who wrote the piece for Canadian Running. “If I remember correctly she got the Canadian record in the 10k, which stands today, either 10 days before or after she got the bronze in the cross-country. So she was ahead of her time. Her 1,500m record was only broken in 2019 by Gabriela DeBues-Stafford. She just was a phenomenal, world-class athlete and tough as nails.”
Kanuka’s spikes from her Olympics race are on display at the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in her hometown of Regina. She was enshrined there in 1994, in the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1996 and in the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 1999. She serves as a director for Athletics Canada and has built a rewarding career as a coach. Marathoner Natasha Wodak, bound for the Tokyo Olympics, is one of her charges.
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Kanuka coaching Canadian marathoner Natasha Wodak, who’ll be running the 42.2-kilometre race in Japan. Photo by Wilson Lau
As a coach, Kanuka made several trips with her younger athletes from Vancouver to a meet in Eugene, Oregon, where Decker lives on a sprawling acreage.
“A few years ago, I got up early to go for a run on what’s called Pre’s Trail, before the track meet,” recalled Kanuka. “I remember thinking wouldn’t it be nice if Mary were to pop up out of the bushes and we could run together. And I’ll be darned if that wasn’t exactly what happened. We had a really nice, hour-long run together.”
They had been friends for years and competitors in one of the most controversial athletics events at an Olympics. Decker had retired in 1999, decades had passed and they talked not about that race, but of life after running.
“In those years we didn’t hang out, she had her crowd, but we did see each other and enjoy dinner together every so often,” said Kanuka. “Her husband was a friend of mine; he and I went to school in San Diego. There was a lot of connection there.”
That said, Kanuka was asked if she felt for Decker at the time of the fall.
“I can empathize, but it’s part of the game. Did I wish she had gotten up? Maybe. Just because you wish that for athletes. But would I have stopped to help her up? No.”
She laughed.
“All’s fair in the game. These things happen. It’s part of it. We learn from our experiences and come back, and try and piece everything together and do it again. That’s how it always works.”
dbarnes@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes
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