FLORENCE DELOREZ GRIFFITH JOYNER
December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998
(An American beauty, wife, mother, daughter, leader, Olympic world record setting to this day field and track star, actress and businesswoman)
Florence was born on Monday December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998 a Sagittarius, also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and Olympic field athlete. She is respected and known as the “fastest woman of all time” based on the factual statistics 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.
Florence was born in Los Angeles, California, and she was raised in the Jordan Downs public housing complex. As a kid, she dreamed of becoming a beautician, designer, artist and poet. She became a popular figure in international track and field because of her record-setting performances and flashy personal style. She enrolled at California State University- Northridge but soon found funds lacking to continue her education. She dropped out of school and took a job as a bank teller. Her university track and field coach, Bob Kersee located financial aid for the athlete and she returned to school. She followed him to UCLA, and under his guidance she won the National Collegiate Championship in 1982.
Out of sheer dedication and determination, she set her goals on obtaining a world record or an Olympic gold medal before retiring from the sport of track. She finished second in the National Collegiate Championship in 1983. The following year at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in front of her hometown crowd, Griffith won the Silver Medal in the 200 meter.
Florence 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. Florence 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 Bolden. However, she had to drop out and was employed as a bank teller to support her family. Kersee was then able to find financial aid for Florence and she returned to college. Brown, Bolden, and Florence qualified for the 100-meter final at the trials for the 1980 Summer Olympics. Florence 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. After the season Kersee became the head coach of the track team at the University of California at Los Angeles, which prompted her 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.
Florence (FLO-JO) 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,
In 1987, Florence Griffith and Al Joyner married, becoming U.S. track and field’s equivalent of a royal family. Joyner left her longtime trainer Bob Kersee to train with Al Joyner, who put her on a more disciplined regimen. No more staying up late braiding hair, no more McDonald’s. He made her concentrate more on weight training, doing exercises then more common for male athletes.
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.
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”. Her coach later stated that he believed her 10.49 second time had been wind-assisted. 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, 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 finals by 0.40 seconds with her time of 21.34 seconds.
At the same Olympics Florence also ran with the 4×100 m relay and the 4×400 m relay teams. Her team won first place in the and second place in the in the relay. Their time is still the second fastest in history; this was her first internationally-rated 4×400 m relay. Florence was the winner of the James E. Sullivan Award of 1988 as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Within a short time approximately four months, she abruptly retired at the age of 29 to pursue acting, writing, fashion and other side ventures (including designing the uniforms of the Indiana Pacers). In 1990, she gave birth to a daughter. Who also sang at the Olympic track trials?
Florence did an appearance on the Charlie Rose show in 1996 (video Excerpts are available), and she announced her comeback to competitive athletics, only this time to concentrate on the 400-meter run. 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. Having 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.
Florence Griffith Joyner On September 21, 1998, Passed away 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. 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,
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.
De Merode later said:
“We performed all possible and imaginable analyses on her…We never found anything. There should not be the slightest suspicion [on Florence Griffith Joyner”.
The family of track star Florence Griffith Joyner is blaming a St. Louis hospital for her death, charging in a lawsuit that doctors failed to detect a brain abnormality two years earlier. Her record has since been broken but Florence Griffin Joyner was a beautiful, humble leader. She lead a clean slate life her legacy will live on.