Florence Griffith-Joyner – To This Day She Remains the Fastest Women in the World

What is the difference between a cheetah and a lion? A cheetah is the fastest animal in the world and can run up to speeds of 70 miles per hour. A lion, by contrast may not be able achieve nearly the same speed, but she has the endurance to keep running long after the cheetah has stopped running.

Florence Griffith-Joyner, née Florence Delorez Griffith was born on December 21, 1959 in what is more commonly referred to as South Central Los Angeles. Raised in “the Projects”, which are low-income housing projects, money was tight for her family. However, values, such as excellence, being the best you can be and achieving your goals are ones that were instilled in her at a young age. As many of her neighbors in the projects were succumbing to drugs and leading a life of crime, growing up with the parents she did with the values she learned from them, going down that path was not an option.

Griffith began running at age seven and by junior high school she was already competing against runners in local area schools. Despite her innate talent, it was important to her parents that she maintain good grades and so graduating with honors was again, something that wasn’t an option for Griffith.

For two years Griffith attended California State University, Northridge but transferred to University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) where she graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Olympic Dreams, The Gold and Setting Records
While still attending UCLA, Griffith ran and placed fourth in the inaugural World Championship games, held in 1983. A year after graduating from UCLA, Griffith qualified for and competed in the 1984 Summer Olympic games, where she won a silver medal for the 200-meter dash. It was at the Olympic games that Griffith first made heads turn. Not only was she extremely fast, but it was also the first glimpse into her rather colorful personal personality that the world would get. At a time when women were donning tracksuits of muted colors, she opted for bold and loud. Complimenting her flamboyant running gear were her rather long, elaborately painted nails.

When Griffith-Joyner – by this time married to Al Joyner, champion triple jump winner and brother of Olympic Gold Medal Winner Jackie Joyner-Kersee – competed again in the World Championship games of 1987, having previously proven herself quite formidable in the 200-meter dash, this time she won a second place trophy. However, it would be trying out for the 1988 Olympic Trials in the 100-meter race that stunned on-lookers, competitors and commentators of the game. Running 10.49 seconds set a world record that today has yet to be broken. It’s safe to assume with that time, she qualified to compete in the 1988 Olympiad games, which were held in Seoul, Korea.

Once there, Griffith set a second world record, this time for the 200-meter dash. Running 200 meters in 21.34 seconds remains to this day the fastest time recorded for that race. For her achievements in the 1988 games, Griffith took home, 3 Gold medals and two Silver ones.

Whispers, Rumors and Controversy
It would be at the 1987 Olympic Trials that the whispers, rumors and speculations about Griffith-Joyner’s life would start. Although her 10.49 seconds for the 100-meter dash stands, the Athletics Annual of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians ruled in 1997, that her incredibly fast speed was likely wind-assisted.

During the 1988 Olympic games, several of her competitors began spreading rumors and speculating that Griffith-Joyner, by this point known the world over as “Flo Jo” had been “doping”, meaning that she was using performance enhancing drugs. Indeed gold medal winner Joaquim Cruz went so far as to say that she could not have posted the times she did without the assistance of drugs.

Retiring shortly after the 1988 Olympic games did little to quell the rumors. What they say: “Knowing that random mandatory drug testing on athletes was set to begin in 1989, Flo-Jo got out while she still had her reputation and wins on record.” What both her husband and she said is that she wanted to start a family, be able to sit on the couch, eat ham and drink a cold beer when she wanted and concentrate on her other true love – fashion design. Indeed in 1989, Flo Jo designed the uniforms for the Indiana Pacers basketball team and had a child later that same year.

Accolades
In addition to Flo Jo winning the gold and silver medals she did, along with setting not one but two world’s records, the following awards were bestowed upon her:

• 1988 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year
• 1988 United States Olympic Committee Sportswoman of the Year
• 1988 Sullivan Award (awarded to top amateur athlete)
• 1988 Jesse Owens Outstanding Track and Field Athlete
• 1995 Inducted into the U.S.A. Track and Field Hall of Fame
• 
Recipient of a Distinguished Service Award from the United Negro College Fund

Ten years after her triumphant and record-breaking wins in Seoul, which led to two nick names: Flo Jo and “The Fastest Woman in the World”, Florence Griffith-Joyner died in her sleep. She was only 38 years old. Her untimely passing started the rumor mill all over again about her drug usage, despite having retired ten years earlier. Her husband, Al Joyner, insisted on an autopsy to prove to the world that his wife did not take performance enhancing drugs. The coroner ruled Flo Jo’s death to be of natural causes and due to suffocation, the result of an epileptic seizure, which she had been known to have.

It is the hope of the Florence Griffith-Joyner’s family, that Flo Jo, known to be the fastest women on earth and with the longest and most elaborately painted nails in competitive sports, that the rumors be put to rest. Flo Jo is hardly the first athlete to break records and defy physics. After 7-time Tours de France winner Lance Armstrong not only beat advanced testicular cancer but also went on to win that many Tours, the rumors persisted that he had been doping. Indeed there are those who have been caught doping in running, baseball, basketball, bicycling and other sports. But sometimes someone just comes along who is just born from greatness. That indeed describes Florence Griffith-Joyner, a woman with the running ability of a cheetah.