Florence Griffith Joyner

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Florence Griffith Joyner bigraphy, stories - American track and field athlete

Florence Griffith Joyner : biography

December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998

Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete. She is considered the "fastest woman of all time"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/features/joyner/gallery/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2011-06-22-carmelita-jeter-womens-100_n.htmhttp://www.legacy.com/ns/news-story.aspx?t=florence-griffith-joyner–the-fastest-woman-on-earth&id=196 based on the fact that the world records she set in 1988 for both the 100 metres and 200 metres still stand and have yet to be seriously challenged. She died in her sleep as the result of an epileptic seizure in 1998 at the age of 38. She attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Education and career

Griffith was born in Los Angeles, California, and she was raised in the Jordan Downs public housing complex. During the late 1980s she became a popular figure in international track and field because of her record-setting performances and flashy personal style. She was the wife of the triple jumper Al Joyner and the sister-in-law of the heptathlete and long jumper Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Griffith ran track at Jordan High School in Los Angeles. As a senior in 1978, she finished 6th at the CIF California State Meet behind future teammates Alice Brown and Pam Marshall. Griffith 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 Jeanette Bolden. However, Griffith had to drop out in order to support her family, and then she took a job as a bank teller. Kersee was then able to find financial aid for Griffith and she returned to college.http://sports.jrank.org/pages/1834/Griffith-Joyner-Florence-Olympic-Dreams.html Brown, Bolden, and Griffith qualified for the 100-meter final at the trials for the 1980 Summer Olympics (Brown winning, Griffith last in the final). Griffith also ran the 200 meters, narrowly finishing in 4th, a foot out of a qualifying position. But the U.S. Government had already decided to boycott those Olympic Games mooting those results.http://www.usatf.org/statistics/champions/OlympicTrials/HistoryOfTheOlympicTrials.pdf After the season Kersee became the head coach of the track team at the University of California at Los Angeles, which prompted Griffith 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.

Griffith finished fourth in the 200-metre 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 colourful fingernails, rather than the silver medal that she won in the 1984 Summer Olympics. In 1985, she won the 100-metre 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, Al Joyner, in 1987.

Upon returning at the 1987 World Championships, Griffith Joyner finished second again in the 200-metre sprint. Shortly after, in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Olympic Trials, she stunned her colleagues when she sprinted 100 metres 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 metres per second (no wind), some observers who were present noted evidence of significant winds, and wind speeds of up to 7.0 metres per second were measured at other times during the track meet.

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". Griffith Joyner’s coach later stated that he believed her 10.49 second time had been wind-assisted. Besides 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.