200metres silver medal at 1987 World Championships.
After having gone into virtual semi-retirement at the end of a
lacklustre 1986 season, Florence Griffith, at the age of 28, returned
better than ever in 1987, setting new standards, and laying the
foundation for her rise to superstardom in 1988. At the US national
championships held at San Jose in June, Griffith won her heat of the
200m in 22.35sec, her fastest time for three years. She improved on
this time in winning her semi-final the next day (26 June) in 22.20sec.
The final later that day produced some phenomenal times, aided by wind
assistance over the legal limit and the usage of hand timing due to
equipment malfunction. Pam Marshall won the race in 21.6sec with
Florence second in 21.7sec. This second placing qualified Griffith for
her second World Championships which were held at Rome in August.
Griffith caused a minor sensation in Rome not only for her fast times,
but also with the full length skin-tight body suit she wore in the
preliminary rounds of the 200m. With her long fingernails trimmed,
brightly coloured eye-catching attire (see photo above) would
from then on become the Griffith trademark. At Rome she won her
semi-final in 22.38 sec, and then in the final dipped under 22 seconds
(21.96sec) for the first time when she finished second to Silke Gladisch
(East Germany) in the final. In addition, Griffith ran the third leg
on the US 4 x 100m relay team which won the gold medal. In the lead-up
to Rome, she recorded her best time ever (10.96sec) over 100m at
Cologne. On October 10 she married Al Joyner, the 1984 Olympic triple
jump gold medallist, and thenceforth adopted the name Florence
Griffith-Joyner, which would very soon become a household name. (Ron Casey)
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Florence Griffith-Joyner in full flow at the 1988 Olympic Games. Photo G. Herringshaw.
Flo-Jo mashes world records at US Olympic trials .
In the early part of the 1988 season, Florence Griffith-Joyner continued
the form improvement she had shown during 1987. In June she ran
10.89sec for the 100m at San Diego and 22.15sec over 200m at Santa
Monica. With this form, Griffith-Joyner came to the US Olympic Trials
in July at Indianapolis with an excellent chance to make the US team in
both the 100m and 200m. However, nobody was prepared for the
performances that she would achieve at the trials. In the space of
eight days she was transformed from a world-class athlete into a
household name. One headline writer abbreviated her lengthy name to
'Flojo', and thenceforth, this became the name by which she would be
popularly known. On July 16 she won her 100m heat in 10.60sec, the
fastest time ever recorded by a woman, but unfortunately aided by an
illegal wind.
Later that day, in winning her quarter-final she recorded
an unbelievable time of 10.49sec, well below Evelyn Ashford's 10.76sec
World Record. The next day she won her semi-final in 10.70sec and the
final in 10.61sec. In four races, she had run faster than the existing
World Record on each occasion, and in three of them the wind assistance
was legal. Griffith-Joyner produced a similar set of world-class times
in winning the 200m, although Marita Koch's and Heike Drechsler's joint
World Record of 21.71sec remained intact. Griffith-Joyner's times over
the four rounds were 21.96sec, 21.77sec, 21.90sec (wind assisted) and
21.85sec in the final. All four times were better or equal to her
previous best of 21.96sec. By the time Griffith-Joyner arrived in Seoul
for the Olympic Games the whole world was waiting to see if she could
reproduce her Olympic Trials performances on the greatest stage of all.
(RC)
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Photograph by George Herringshaw. ©
Three gold medlas and a silver at 1988 Olympic Games.
At the Olympic Games the legend of Florence Griffith-Joyner continued to
grow with another series of unbelievable performances. She easily won
both the 100m and 200m gold medals leaving a number of world-class
athletes floundering in her wake. Her winning times over the four
rounds of the 100m were 10.88sec, 10.62sec (both new Olympic records),
10.70sec (wind assisted) and 10.54sec (wind assisted). She then turned
her attention to the 200m, where she won the first two rounds in
22.51sec and 21.76sec (the latter time beating the US national record
she had set at the US Olympic Trials). In the semi-final, she smashed
Koch's and Drechsler's joint World Record of 21.71sec with a time of
21.56sec. Not content with that, in the final the same day, she
annihilated a top-class international field as well as the World Record
by setting a new standard of 21.34sec. (the photo above shows her celebrating with husband Al after the final).
Two days later, Flojo ran the third leg on the US 4 x 100m relay team
when it won the gold medal beating their old foes East Germany. As the
other three girls hugged each other in celebration, Flojo slipped
quietly away to prepare for the 4 x 400m relay final less than 30
minutes away. Unfortunately, the dream of four gold medals was not to
be. Despite a superb split of 48.1sec from Griffith-Joyner, the US team
had to settle for second in the 4 x 400m relay behind the Soviet Union.
Both teams broke the existing World Record set by East Germany in
1984. She retired from the track after that race to pursue a career in
acting and writing. On 21 September 1998 the world was shocked to hear
that Florence Griffith-Joyner had died in her sleep from a heart
seizure. She was only 38 years old. (Ron Casey) |
....
Footnote.
Aside from whether her 1988 Olympic trial world record was wind-aided, Griffith Joyner was dogged by rumours of drug use.
Griffith Joyner retired from competitive track and field after her Olympic triumph in 1988.She was repeatedly tested during competition and she did not fail any of these drug tests. Mandatory random out-of-competition drug testing came into effect during the 1989 season.
Her 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. She was also found to have had a cavernous hemangioma, a congenital brain abnormality that made Joyner subject to seizures. 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.
Griffith Joyner's supporters claimed that the autopsy cleared her of allegations that she used performance-enhancing drugs. The Orange County coroner's office noted that the autopsy records showed that she did not die from drugs or banned substances. 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.
The city of Mission Viejo dedicated a park at the entrance to her neighborhood in her honor.
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