On a Pain Scale of One to Ten, Ithink I'm Pushing Nine ; Exclusive: Zola Budd, Once Athletics' Golden Girl, Speaks in Detail for the First Time About the Heartbreak She Endured Over the Break- Up of Her Marriage

Mail on Sunday › April 24, 2006

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Summary

THERE isn't a trace of makeup on her face and her hair is still short, cut in the practical style of her athletics heyday.

Her reed-thin body looks frail in her loose-fitting tracksuit, almost defenceless.

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On a Pain Scale of One to Ten, Ithink I'm Pushing Nine ; Exclusive: Zola Budd, Once Athletics' Golden Girl, Speaks in Detail for the First Time About the Heartbreak She Endured Over the Break- Up of Her Marriage

Shortly before her 40th birthday, Zola Budd is still the nononsense, no-frills woman who became the darling of athletics in the Eighties.

But today it is an older, wearier Zola. The sorrow she's experienced in the past year shows in her face. And the woman who once had the world at her feet now has a lot of what she describes as rock-bottom days.

'On a pain scale of ten I'm probably pushing nine,' she says. 'I'm very hurt. I still feel raw.

Sometimes I feel I can't go on. It's only mercy from above that keeps me going. I still haven't come to terms with it ...

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