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RUN FOR THE GOLD

MARY DECKER, OLYMPIC 
GOLD CONTENDER, IS
HONORED AS TANQUERAY
AWARD WINNER

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Mary Decker, blazing a trail of triumph on running tracks all over the world, received the Tanqueray Achievement Award today for her excellence in amateur sports, puttin [[putting]] two world marks and six U.S.A. records into the offically recognized history of competition.
Running under the colors of Athletics West, the 25-year-old brown-haired beauty from Eugene, Ore., gave special lustre to the victories of the U.S. team in the recent World Track and Field Championships at Helsinki when she won two gold medals with spectacular stretch finishes in the 1500 and 3000 meter events.
She won the 3000 race on Aug. 10 with a clocking of 8:34.62 and followed four days later with a 4:00.9 finish in the 1500. The performances, in which she needed a final burst of speed each time to thwart fast closing Soviet runners, were sufficiently brilliant for her to garner the gold, but neither topped her previous U.S. records for these distances. She set the 1500 meter mark with a 3:59.43 race at Zurich, Aug. 13, 1980 and locked in the 3000 record at 8:29.71 at Oslo on July 7, 1982.

Now heralded as America's Princess of Prance and virtually certain to be in the forefront of gold medal competition at the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles, the return there will be sentimentally significant. 
For it was in Los Angeles where the Flemington, N.J., native naively began her running career as a pig-tailed pre-teen tyke of 11 on behalf of her sixth grade class, Just for fun she entered a scholastic track meet at Huntington Beach nearby. She admitted wondering, as she was outdistancing a herd of kids from other schools, just what was a cross country race.
She won easily and soon she was not only crossing the country but the world, eventually establishing herself as America's finest woman runner.
Previously this year she received the most prestigious trophy that can

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[[image right: Mary Decker headshot]]