By the time of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984, Zola Budd was the most talked-about athlete in the world, but even by the standards of her life over the previous few months, nobody could have imagined how the events of August 11 would unfold.

Budd, a waif-like South African distance runner of outstanding quality who competed barefooted, stunned athletics at the start of the year by breaking the 5,000m world record by more than six seconds, running 15min 1.83sec to shatter the mark held by the American Mary Decker.

South Africa was not allowed to compete at the Olympics because of apartheid, but Budd had a British-born grandfather, and with a great deal of help from a Fleet Street newspaper, which allegedly paid £100,000 for her story, she was brought to England under a veil of secrecy and fast-tracked into becoming a British citizen. She quickly proved her ability and was selected to compete for Great Britain at the Olympics.

The final of the 3,000m was held in the Memorial Coliseum. The home fans were expecting a gold medal from Decker. She liked to run from the front, as did Budd, and by the time the field entered the home straight with just over three laps to go, the pair had already shared an exchange after bumping into each other. Budd led from Decker, with Britain’s Wendy Sly on the outside and, in behind, Maricica Puica of Romania. There was a tangle, Decker’s leg touched Budd’s foot, the pair lost balance, Decker caught Budd’s trailing leg and the American fell, careering off the track and into the infield.

Boos rang out around the stadium. Decker was out of the race and Budd went backwards, finishing seventh as Puica won in 8min 35.96sec, followed by Sly in 8min 39.47sec, with Canada’s Lynn Williams third in 8min 42.14sec. Decker was carried from the trackside by her future husband, the British discus thrower Richard Slaney. After the race, Budd went to apologise, but Decker told her she was not interested.

Sly, 46, a publishing director who lives in Purley, London, and has a nine-year-old son, Max, recalls: “I knew Mary had fallen, but I did not pay much attention. All I thought was that I had to go for it; I just focused on my own race. I assumed Mary had got up and carried on running. I heard the crowd booing, but only after the race, when everyone was asking me about everyone else except me and my performance, did I realise it was such a huge issue. My goal was to win a medal and nobody cared about it except me. The incident is remembered because Zola was the most controversial athlete of that period and Mary was the American darling. It was a classic disaster waiting to happen.”

More than 22 years later, in Bainsvlei on the outskirts of Bloemfontein, Budd reveals an extraordinary fact. “I have never seen on TV what happened in Los Angeles,” says the 40-year-old mother of three. “When it came on news programmes, I always turned them off. I do not see it as something which has left a cloud over my career.”

The summer after LA, the pair met in a $200,000 showdown at Crystal Palace. Decker easily won the race, with Budd finishing fourth, earning $125,000 in the process. But not since 1992 has Budd spoken to the now Decker-Slaney. “We were running in a road race in Australia,” says Budd, who still runs every day. “She said she still blamed me for what happened but she has forgiven me, whatever that means.”

Yet since 1984 the lives of Budd, Decker-Slaney and Sly have taken a remarkable course. Budd, who won the world cross- country championships for Britain in 1985 and 1986, returned to South Africa in 1988, but the pressure of the saga had contributed to her parents being divorced in 1986. Three years later, her estranged father, Frank, who had been first approached five years earlier about bringing her to the UK, was murdered with his own gun at the farmhouse where he lived.

In the same year Budd married Mike Pieterse, a South African businessman. They have three children, Lisa, 11, and eight-year-old twins Azelle and Mikey, but recently filed for divorce. Yet whatever the trauma, Budd still talks with enthusiasm about her life and what lies ahead. “I am a full-time mum and I am doing a Masters degree in pastoral therapy,” she says. “I try to run as much as I can. I don’t regret what happened by going to England in 1984, but had I stayed in South Africa, it might have extended my running career more. I did not know at the time that South Africa would be allowed back into the Olympics in 1992.”

Budd ran for her native country then, but failed to make the final of the 5,000m, yet Decker-Slaney was still competing four years later in Atlanta amid further controversy. Now a mother — her daughter Ashley was born in 1986 — her life was rocked at the Olympic trials when a drugs test showed high levels of testosterone. Decker-Slaney disputed the findings, blaming it on birth-control pills, and was allowed to run in the Games, at which she failed to progress from the heats of the 5,000m. The next summer, she was banned by the IAAF before her national governing body reinstated her, only for the suspension to be upheld by an arbitration panel. She lives with her family in Oregon.

Sly, who still runs three days a week, retired from athletics in 1991, but between December 2003 and April 2004, her life changed. She had an enormous growth in her womb, which meant four months of medication before an operation. During that time she was mugged, smashing her head on the road and sustaining a clot on the brain. “I could not see out of my right eye and I lost the feeling of one side,” she says.

As for Puica, few Olympic champions have been so unheralded. She was the veteran of the field — she is now 56 — and in 1985 she broke the 2,000m world record at Crystal Palace. She was a vocal critic of the dictatorial regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.