Florence Griffith Joyner

Florence Griffith Joyner

Florence Griffith in 1988
Personal information
Full name	Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner
Nationality	American
Born	December 21, 1959 Los Angeles, California
Died	September 21, 1998 (aged 38) Mission Viejo, California
Height	170 cm (5 ft 7 in)
Weight	57 kg (126 lb)
Sport
Sport	Running
Event(s)	100 meters, 200 meters
Club	Tiger World Class Athletic Club West Coast Athletic Club
Retired	1988
Medal record Representing the  United States Olympic Games 1988 Seoul 100 m 1988 Seoul 200 m 1988 Seoul 4×100 m 1984 Los Angeles 200 m 1988 Seoul 4×400 m World Championships 1987 Rome 4×100 m 1987 Rome 200 m

Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner^[1] (December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete. She is considered the fastest woman of all time^[2][3][4] based on the fact that the world records she set in 1988 for both the 100 m and 200 m still stand and have yet to be seriously challenged. She died in her sleep as the result of an epileptic seizure in 1998 at the age of 38. She attended California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Education and career

Griffith was born in Los Angeles, California, and she was raised in the Jordan Downs public housing complex. During the late 1980s she became a popular figure in international track and field because of her record-setting performances and flashy personal style. She was the wife of the triple jumper Al Joyner and the sister-in-law of the heptathlete and long jumper Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Griffith ran track at Jordan High School in Los Angeles. As a senior in 1978, she finished sixth at the CIF California State Meet behind future teammates Alice Brown and Pam Marshall.^[5] Griffith attended the California State University at Northridge, and she was on the track team coached by Joyner-Kersee's future husband, Bob Kersee. This team also included her teammates Brown and Jeanette Bolden. However, Griffith had to drop out in order to support her family, and then she took a job as a bank teller. Kersee was then able to find financial aid for Griffith and she returned to college.^[6] Brown, Bolden, and Griffith qualified for the 100-meter final at the trials for the 1980 Summer Olympics (Brown winning, Griffith last in the final). Griffith also ran the 200 meters, narrowly finishing fourth, a foot out of a qualifying position. However, the U.S. Government had already decided to boycott those Olympic Games mooting those results.^[7] After the season Kersee became the head coach of the track team at the University of California at Los Angeles, which prompted Griffith to also transfer there, since she was academically eligible to do so. In 1982, Griffith graduated from UCLA with her bachelor's degree in psychology.

Griffith finished fourth in the 200 meter sprint at the first World Championship in Athletics in 1983. The following year she gained much more attention, though mostly because of her extremely long and colorful fingernails, rather than the silver medal that she won in the 1984 Summer Olympics. In 1985, she won the 100-meter IAAF Grand Prix Final with the time of 11.00 seconds. After the 1984 Olympic Games, she spent less time running, and she married the Olympic triple jump champion of 1984, Al Joyner, in 1987. Upon returning at the 1987 World Championships, Griffith Joyner finished second again in the 200 meter sprint.

In 1988, with no outstanding early season marks to indicate fitness, in the first race of the quarterfinals of the U.S. Olympic Trials, she stunned her colleagues when she sprinted 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, the world record. Several sources indicate that her race was most likely wind-assisted. Although at the time of the race the wind meter at the event measured a wind speed of 0.0 meters per second (no wind), some observers who were present noted evidence of significant winds, and wind speeds of up to 7.0 m/s were measured at other times during the track meet. The previous race on the track was measured at +5.2, and while the second quarterfinal was also 0.0, the third quarterfinal was +4.9.^[7]

Since 1997 the International Athletics Annual of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians has listed this performance as "probably strongly wind assisted, but recognized as a world record".^[8] Besides this one race, Griffith Joyner's fastest wind-legal time in this sprint was 10.61 seconds, which would also be the unbroken world record.

By now known to the world as "Flo-Jo", Griffith Joyner was the big favorite for the titles in the sprint events at the 1988 Summer Olympics. In the 100-meter final, she ran a wind-assisted 10.54, beating her nearest rival Evelyn Ashford by 0.30 seconds. In the 200 meter semifinal, she set the world record of 21.56 seconds, and then she broke this record again in winning in the final by 0.38 seconds with her time of 21.34 seconds.^[9]

At the same Olympics Griffith Joyner also ran with the 4 × 100 m relay and the 4 × 400 m relay teams. Her team won first place in the 4 × 100 m relay and second place in the 4 × 400 m relay. Their time is still the second fastest in history, following the winner of this race. This was her first internationally rated 4 × 400 m relay. Griffith Joyner was the winner of the James E. Sullivan Award of 1988 as the top amateur athlete (male or female) in the United States. She retired from competition shortly after that.

In 1996, Griffith Joyner appeared on Charlie Rose and announced her comeback to competitive athletics, only this time to concentrate on the 400-meter run.^[10] Her reason was that she had already set world marks in both the 100 m and 200 m events, with the 400 m world record being her goal. Griffith Joyner trained steadily leading up to the U.S. Olympic trials in June. However, tendonitis in her right leg ended her hopes of becoming a triple-world-record holder. Al Joyner was to also attempt a comeback, but he too was unable to compete due to an injured quadriceps muscle.^[11]

Among the things she did away from the track was to design the basketball uniforms for the Indiana Pacers NBA team in 1989.^[12] Griffith Joyner appeared in the soap opera, Santa Barbara in 1992, as "Terry Holloway", a photographer similar to Annie Leibovitz. Griffith Joyner was also an artist and painter. Her work has been on display as part the Art of The Olympians (AOTO). She is one of two posthumous members of AOTO,^[13] the other being the founder and Olympian, Al Oerter.

Allegations of drug use

In 1988, Joaquim Cruz, the Brazilian gold medalist in the 800-meter run at the 1984 Summer Olympics, claimed that Griffith Joyner's times could only have been the result of using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, that her physique had changed dramatically in 1988 (showing marked gains in muscle mass and definition), and that her performance had improved dramatically over a short period of time.^[14] Before the 1988 track and field season, Griffith Joyner's best time in the 100-meter sprint was 10.96 seconds. In 1988, she improved that by 0.47 seconds (or 0.35 sec for the non-wind-aided time). Similarly, her best before 1988 at 200-meters was 21.96 seconds. In 1988, she improved that by 0.62 seconds to 21.34 seconds, another time that has not been approached. Prior to the Olympic games in Seoul, she prematurely cut her European tour short (she had been booed off the track by the spectators). Griffith Joyner attributed the change in her physique to new health programs.^[15] Al Joyner replaced Bob Kersee as her coach, and he changed her training program to include more lower body strength training exercises such as squats and lunges.^[16]

Darrell Robinson, a former teammate of Griffith Joyner, claimed that he sold her 10 c.c. of HGH for $2,000 in 1988. He said Joyner told him: "if you want to make $1 million, you've got to invest some thousands."^[15] Robinson also claimed to receive steroids from coach Bob Kersee, and said he saw Carl Lewis inject himself with drugs he believed to be testosterone.^[17] Robinson never provided any evidence for his allegations and was shunned by the athletics community, leading to the premature end of his career.

Griffith Joyner retired from competitive track and field after her Olympic triumph in 1988.^[18] She was repeatedly tested during competition, and she passed all of these drug tests. Griffith Joyner made public her decision to retire from Olympic competition one week after it was announced that random out-of-competition drug testing would be instituted during the 1989 season.^[19][20]

After her death in 1998, Prince Alexandre de Merode, the Chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, claimed that Joyner was singled out for extra, rigorous drug testing during the 1988 Olympic Games because of rumors of steroid use. De Merode told The New York Times that Manfred Donike, who was at that time considered to be the foremost expert on drugs and sports, failed to discover any banned substances during that testing.^[21] De Merode later said:

"We performed all possible and imaginable analyses on her. We never found anything. There should not be the slightest suspicion."^[22]

Death

On September 21, 1998, Griffith Joyner died in her sleep at home in the Canyon Crest neighborhood of Mission Viejo, California, at the age of 38. The unexpected death was investigated by the sheriff-coroner's office, which announced on October 22 that the cause of death was suffocation during a severe epileptic seizure.^[18] She was also found to have had a cavernous hemangioma, a congenital vascular brain abnormality that made Joyner subject to seizures.^[23] According to a family attorney, she had suffered a tonic–clonic seizure in 1990, and had also been treated for seizures in 1993 and 1994.

The coroner had requested that Griffith Joyner's body specifically be tested for steroids, but was informed that there was not enough urine in her bladder and that the test could not accurately be performed on other biological samples.^[18]

The city of Mission Viejo dedicated a park at the entrance to her neighborhood in her honor.^[24][25]

Olympic Games and trials results

• Source:^[9][26]

Race	Venue	Date	Round	Time	Wind
100 m	Indianapolis	July 16, 1988	Qualifying heat	10.60	+3.2
100 m	Indianapolis	July 16, 1988	Quarter-final	10.49	0.0
100 m	Indianapolis	July 17, 1988	Semi-final	10.70	+1.6
100 m	Indianapolis	July 17, 1988	Final	10.61	+1.2
100 m	Seoul	September 24, 1988	Qualifying heat	10.88	+1.0
100 m	Seoul	September 24, 1988	Quarter-final	10.62	+1.0
100 m	Seoul	September 25, 1988	Semi-final	10.70	+2.6
100 m	Seoul	September 25, 1988	Final	10.54	+3.0
200 m	Indianapolis	July 22, 1988	Qualifying heat	21.96	+0.6
200 m	Indianapolis	July 22, 1988	Quarter-final	21.77	−0.1
200 m	Indianapolis	July 23, 1988	Semi-final	21.90	+2.4
200 m	Indianapolis	July 23, 1988	Final	21.85	+1.3
200 m	Seoul	September 28, 1988	Qualifying heat	22.51	?
200 m	Seoul	September 28, 1988	Quarter-final	21.76	+0.7
200 m	Seoul	September 29, 1988	Semi-final	21.56	+1.7
200 m	Seoul	September 29, 1988	Final	21.34	+1.3

See also

• History of the African Americans in Los Angeles

References

1. Whitaker, Matthew C. (2011). Icons of Black America: Breaking Barriers and Crossing Boundaries, Volume 1 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 520. ISBN 0-313-37642-5.
2. "FloJo: World's Fastest Woman". CNN.
3. "World's fastest woman Carmelita Jeter seeks Olympic gold". USA Today. June 22, 2011.
4. Florence Griffith Joyner: Fastest Woman on Earth. Legacy.com. December 21, 2010.
5. "California State Meet Results – 1915 to present". prepcaltrack.com. Retrieved December 25, 2012.
6. Florence Griffith Joyner – Olympic Dreams – Kersee, Angeles, Olympics, and Coach. Sports.jrank.org. Retrieved on May 11, 2014.
7. Hymans, R. (2008) The History of the United States Olympic Trials – Track & Field. USA Track & Field. usatf.org
8. Linthorne, Nick (March 2003). "Wind Assistance". Brunel University. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
9. Florence Griffith Joyner. sports-reference.com
10. "Flo Jo may abort comeback". The San Francisco Chronicle. April 21, 1997.
11. Atlanta Out for Joyners. Nytimes.com (June 4, 1996). Retrieved on May 11, 2014.
12. Schwartz, Kris. "FloJo Made Speed Fashionable". ESPN.com. Retrieved June 24, 2011.
13. "Art of the Olympians | Florence Griffith-Joyner". artoftheolympians.org. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
14. "O doping está no auge" (in Portuguese). Veja Online. August 16, 2000.
15. Speed, glamour, doubt will be Flo-Jo's legacy, Reuters, September 23, 1998
16. Dream Chaser, Tom Friend, ESPN.com
17. "Ex-teammate: Flo-jo, Lewis Used Drugs". tribunedigital-chicagotribune.
18. Anderson, Kristina Rebelo. "The Uneasy Death Of Florence Griffith Joyner". salon.com.
19. Suspicion surrounds Flo-Jo's death. BBC News (September 23, 1998). Retrieved on May 11, 2014.
20. TAC Board Approves Random Drug Testing. Articles.latimes.com (March 13, 1989). Retrieved on May 11, 2014.
21. PLUS: TRACK AND FIELD; Official Defends Griffith Joyner. Nytimes.com (September 24, 1998). Retrieved on May 11, 2014.
22. Montague, James (August 10, 2012) Saving Flo Jo: Taking back a legacy. CNN
23. "Seizure was brought on by a congenital defect in Griffith Joyner's brain". BBC. October 23, 1998. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
24. Florence Joyner Olympiad Park. Google.com. Retrieved on June 30, 2014.
25. "(22) Florence Joyner Olympiad Park - CITY OF MISSION VIEJO".
26. Track & Field all-time performances. Alltime-athletics.com. Retrieved on May 11, 2014.

External links

• Official website
• Florence Griffith Joyner profile at IAAF
• USATF profile
• Florence Griffith Joyner at Find-A-Grave
• Florence Griffith Joyner is breaking 100m World Record. Video
• Florence Griffith Joyner is breaking 200m World Record. Video
• Florence Griffith Joyner at the Internet Movie Database
• ESPN OTL: Dream Chaser – E-Ticket
• Art of the Olympians Member