![]() ![]() Olympic Trials had made her an object of suspicion when she arrived at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, compounded by the shocking news of Ben Johnson’s fall from grace. She was working 12 hours a day.”įlo Jo’s incredible run at the U.S. More than 20 lbs every night to build up the strength in her legs. “We bought a $150 leg exercise machine and she did leg curls every night. The other ingredient, according to Joyner, was purchased in a local K-Mart. “She needed to know trust and faith and belief.” I was the person that gave the love back,” he says. The two married in 1987 and it was this emotional and financial stability that Joyner credits, in part, to the huge jump that Flo Jo made between that year and 1988. I never saw a woman look like that before. I thought I could run off and leave her but I couldn’t shake her.” ![]() She’s was not only beautiful, but she could run. So we start running together and started being friends. I remember that because I never saw a woman look like that before she made me speechless,” he recalls. Joyner still vividly remembers seeing his future wife for the first time. It was only when she managed to secure a meager sponsorship that she could start to take running seriously. Her running ability at 200 and 400 meters got her to college but she dropped out to become a bank clerk and part time hair stylist to support her family. My wife was great then and she is great now.”įlorence Griffith was the seventh of eleven children brought up in Jordan Downs, a run-down public housing complex in Los Angeles. The things that separated her were her mental focus and toughness. We did a lot of things then that they do now with nutrition. “It was jealousy,” Joyner tells CNN, denying that Flo Jo ever took drugs. In any era she would be hailed as the greatest of all time, a sprinter who transformed her discipline in the same way Usain Bolt has transformed his.īut her improvement was so great, her times so exceptional, the change in her physique so profound that, for most, drugs – steroids – was the only answer. Ben Johnson’s brutal world record and subsequent ban for testing positive for steroids cast a long shadow over the Games, and an even longer one over Flo Jo. The run was a prelude to that other unforgettable sprint performance at Seoul. “Later when she won the medals they said it was drugs.” “At first, when she beat the record, they said it was wind assisted,” he exasperated. Looking back at that moment her husband and then coach, the Olympic gold medal winning triple jumper Al Joyner, laughs when he recalls the reaction to the record. “They must have done something to the electronics because she won by such a margin … it might be right but 10.4(9) … is incredible.”īut the electronics, even if there was a suspicion of a fault, were deemed infallible and the record stood. “I…it can’t be, nobody can run that fast,” he stuttered when hearing the anemometer had recorded a legal wind speed. The commentator on American TV was dumbstruck. She had smashed it wearing her self-designed, one-legged jump suit and sporting her trademark mane of dark hair and long, painted finger nails. By the time she crossed the finishing line she had recorded a time of 10.49 seconds, almost four hundredths of a second quicker than her previous best before the trial, and a new world record. She got off to an indifferent start but at 60 meters found a different gear and destroyed the field in a way unseen in women’s sprinting. Speed, elegance, beauty, femininity, suspicion. The next ten-and-a-half seconds encapsulated everything that would define Flo Jo for the rest of her life She hadn’t run the 100 meters, not seriously, until now. She had failed to qualify for the boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics but had won silver at the Los Angeles games four years later. ![]() But those who were there to witness her quarterfinal run couldn’t comprehend what they were seeing.įlo Jo, as she would later become known, had been a good, but not exceptional, 200 meter sprinter over the past seven years. When Florence Griffith-Joyner signed up for her 1988 Olympic 100 meter trial in Indianapolis, few expected fireworks. ![]()
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