Florence Griffith-Joyner

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Medal record
Women's Athletics
Gold	1988 Seoul	100 m
Gold	1988 Seoul	200 m
Gold	1988 Seoul	4x100 m
Silver	1984 Los Angeles	200 m
Silver	1988 Seoul	4x400 m
World Championships
Gold	1987 Rome	4 x 100 m relay
Silver	1987 Rome	200 m

Florence Griffith-Joyner, also known as Flo-Jo (December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998) was an American athlete, still holder of the World Records in the 100 m and 200 m as of 2006. She was the wife of track star Al Joyner and the sister-in-law of Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Already fast at an early age, Los Angeles born Delorez Florence Griffith finished fourth in the 200 m at the inaugural World Championships in 1983.

The following year, she gained much more attention, though mostly because of her extremely long and colorful fingernails rather than her silver medal in the Los Angeles Olympics 200 m.

After these Olympics, Griffith spent less time running and married 1984 Olympic triple jump champion Al Joyner. Returning at the 1987 World Championships, she finished second in the 200 m again.

She stunned the world when—known as a 200 m runner—she ran a new 100 m World Record of 10.49 in the quarter-finals of the US Olympic Trials. Every event on that day measured excessive wind speeds and this led many to later suggest that the wind meter in the stadium malfunctioned during the race, but the record is still recognized. Al Joyner, her coach stated that he believed the 10.49 run to be wind aided as well. Flo-Jo never ran faster than 10.61 without excessive wind assistance that season.

Known by 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 m, she ran a (wind-assisted) 10.54 in the final, beating her nearest rival Evelyn Ashford by 3 tenths of a second. In the 200 m, she set a new world record of 21.34, winning by .4 seconds. Griffith-Joyner was also a runner in both the 4 x 100 m and 4 x 400 m relay teams. She won a gold medal in the former event, and a silver in the latter, her first international 4 x 400 m relay. Her effort in the 100m was ranked 98th in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments in 2002. She was the 1988 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.

During her 1988 breakthrough year, Griffith-Joyner was dogged by rumors of drug use. Some of her track competitors insisted that her times could only be the result of using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, mainly because her performance improved dramatically over a short period of time (and when she was rather old for a sprinter).^{[citation needed]}

To add to that controversy Flo-Jo retired from competitive track and field right after her Olympic victories. Many have jokingly claimed that if she could just jog 100m her appearance fees and endorsement contract would be worth multiple millions during 1989. 1989 was the beginning of the out of competition doping controls. Prior to 1989 athletes could only be caught doping during competition. It was known that many athletes used performance enhancing drugs during training and allowed sufficient time for the drugs to pass through the system before competition. Nonetheless, no evidence of performance enhancing drug use by Florence Griffith Joyner has ever been found.

Among the things she did away from the track was design the basketball uniforms for the Indiana Pacers.

[edit] Death

In 1998, Griffith Joyner died in her sleep at her home in Mission Viejo, California. On October 22, the sheriff-coroner's office announced the cause of death as: "1) positional asphyxia 2) epileptiform seizure 3) cavernous angioma, left orbital frontal cerebrum".^[1]

The cavernous angioma referred to a brain abnormality discovered during the autopsy that made Joyner subject to seizures. It is in fact, a congenital defect, having developed at birth.^[2] In 1990 she had, according to a family attorney, suffered a grand mal seizure and had been treated for seizures in 1990, 1993 and 1994.

The cause of death in effect said that she had suffocated in her pillow during a severe epileptic seizure. This is contrary to the many unsubstantiated claims that doping had cause her early death.

[edit] Footnotes

^ Kristina Rebelo Anderson. The Uneasy Death Of Florence Griffith Joyner. salon.com.
^ "Seizure was brought on by a congenital defect in Griffith Joyner's brain". BBC.

[edit] External links

Olympic champions in women's 100 m

Olympic champions in women's 200 m
1948: Fanny Blankers-Koen \| 1952: Marjorie Jackson \| 1956: Betty Cuthbert \| 1960: Wilma Rudolph \| 1964: Edith McGuire \| 1968: Irena Szewińska \| 1972: Renate Stecher \| 1976: Bärbel Eckert \| 1980: Bärbel Eckert \| 1984: Valerie Brisco-Hooks \| 1988: Florence Griffith-Joyner \| 1992 Gwen Torrence \| 1996: Marie-José Pérec \| 2000: Marion Jones \| 2004: Veronica Campbell