Zola Budd

Zola Budd, also known as Zola Pieterse, was born on 26 May 1966 in Bloemfontein and is a South African middle-distance and long-distance runner. She became famous at 17 when she broke the 5000 metres world record in early 1984 in South Africa, a time the IAAF refused to ratify because of the sporting boycott of apartheid, and she then took the record officially in 1985 while representing Great Britain. She ran the 3000 metres at the 1984 Olympic Games for Great Britain, where a collision with Mary Decker made the race famous, and again at the 1992 Games for South Africa. She also won the World Cross Country Championships in 1985 and 1986 and mainly trained and raced barefoot. After moving to South Carolina in 2008 she ran marathons and ultramarathons, finishing the 2012 Comrades Marathon of nearly 90 kilometres in 8:06:09 and the 2014 race in 6:55:55, which earned her a gold medal.