Florence Griffith Joyner

Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (née Griffith; December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete who set world records in the 100m and 200m in 1988. During the late 1980s, she became a popular figure due to both her record-setting athleticism and eclectic personal style.

Griffith Joyner was born and raised in California. She was athletic from a young age and began running at track meets as a child. While attending California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she continued to compete in track and field. While still in college, she qualified for the 100 meters for the 1980 Olympics, but did not compete due to the U.S. boycott. She made her Olympic debut four years later, winning a silver medal in the 200-meters at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. At the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials, Griffith set a new world record in the 100-meters. She won three gold medals at the 1988 Olympics.

In February 1989, Griffith Joyner abruptly retired from track and field. She remained a pop culture figure through endorsement deals, acting, and designing. In 1998, at age 38, she died in her sleep during an epileptic seizure caused by a birth defect. Griffith Joyner is buried at the El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest.

Florence Delorez Griffith was born in Los Angeles, California, the seventh of eleven children born to Robert, an electrician, and Florence Griffith, a seamstress. The family lived in Littlerock, California, before Florence Griffith moved with her children to the Jordan Downs public housing complex located in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

When Griffith was in elementary school, she joined the Sugar Ray Robinson Organization, running in track meets on weekends. She won the Jesse Owens National Youth Games two years in a row, at the ages of 14 and 15. Griffith ran track at Jordan High School in Los Angeles.

Showing an early interest in fashion, Griffith persuaded the members of the track team to wear tights with their uniforms. As a high school senior in 1978, she finished sixth at the CIF California State Meet behind future teammates Alice Brown and Pam Marshall. By the time she graduated from Jordan High School in 1978, she had set high-school records in sprinting and long jump.

Griffith attended CSUN, and was on the track team coached by Bob Kersee. This team, which included Brown and Jeanette Bolden, won the national championship during Griffith's first year of college. Griffith had to drop out to support her family, taking a job as a bank teller. Kersee found financial aid for her and she returned to college in 1980, this time at UCLA where Kersee was working as a coach.

Brown, Bolden, and Griffith qualified for the 100-meter final at the trials for the 1980 Summer Olympics (with Brown winning and Griffith finishing last in the final). Griffith also 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. In 1983, Griffith graduated from UCLA with her bachelor's degree in psychology.

Griffith finished fourth in the 200-meter sprint at the first World Championship in Athletics in 1983. In the next year, she qualified for the Olympics in the 200-meter distance with the second-fastest time at the United States Olympic trials, held in Los Angeles. Evelyn Ashford, another UCLA alumna and early favorite to medal, dropped out of the 200-meter due to injury. Griffith went on to win a silver medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics, coming in second behind teammate Valerie Brisco-Hooks.

After the 1984 Olympic Games, she spent less time running. Griffith continued to run part-time, winning the 100-meter IAAF Grand Prix Final with the time of 11.00 seconds. She did not compete at the 1985 U.S. National Championship. That same year, she returned to working at a bank and styled hair and nails in her spare time. She married Al Joyner, the Olympic triple jump champion of 1984, in 1987.

She returned to athletics in April 1987. Four months later, at the 1987 World Championships in Rome, Griffith Joyner finished second in the 200-meter sprint. Her success during the 1987 season resulted in being ranked second in Track and Field News' 1987 world rankings. The 200 meters remained a stronger event for her than the 100 meters, where she was ranked seventh in the United States.

Before the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials, Griffith Joyner continued to work with her coach and husband's brother-in-law, Kersee, two days a week, but with her new husband coaching her three days a week. She ran the 100 meters in 10.96 seconds at the 1987 Cologne Grand Prix Track and Field Meet, a personal best but the mark was not even in the top 40 of all time. She continued to improve, again setting a personal best of 10.89 in the 100 meters in San Diego on June 25, 1988, but remained shy of the American record holder Evelyn Ashford's three best times. A week before the trials she ran a tune-up race in 10.99 in Santa Monica.

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, a new world record by a margin of 0.27s over the previous record held by Evelyn Ashford. Over the two-day trials, Griffith Joyner recorded the three fastest times for a woman at 100 meters: 10.49 in the quarter-final, 10.70 in the semifinal, and 10.61 in the final. At the same Olympic trials, she also set an American record at the 200-meter distance with a time of 21.77 seconds.

Griffith Joyner's success at the 1988 Olympics led to new opportunities. In the weeks following the Olympics, she earned millions of dollars from endorsement deals, primarily in Japan. She also signed a deal with toy maker LJN Toys for a Barbie-like doll in her likeness.

In 1989, Griffith Joyner designed the basketball uniforms for the Indiana Pacers NBA team. She made a guest appearance as herself on a fourth-season episode of 227. In 1992, she appeared in the soap opera Santa Barbara as "Terry Holloway", a photographer similar to Annie Leibovitz. She served as co-chair of President's Council on Physical Fitness between 1993 and 1998.

In 1996, Griffith Joyner appeared on Charlie Rose and announced her comeback to competitive athletics, concentrating 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. She trained steadily leading up to the U.S. Olympic trials in June. However, tendinitis in her right leg ended her hopes of becoming a triple-world-record holder.

Beyond her running prowess, Griffith Joyner was known for her bold fashion choices. She appeared at the World Championships in 1987 in Rome wearing a hooded speed skating body suit. In April 1988, she started wearing a running suit with the right leg of the suit extending to the ankle and the left leg of the suit cut off, a style she called the "one-legger". The running suits had bold colors such as lime green and purple with white bikini bottoms and were embellished with lightning bolts.

Her nails also garnered attention for their length and designs. Her nails were four inches long with tiger stripes at the 1988 Olympic trials before switching to fuchsia. For the Olympic games themselves, she had six-inch nails painted red, white, blue, and gold. Although many sprinters avoided accessories which might slow them down, Griffith Joyner kept her hair long and wore jewelry while competing. She designed many of her outfits herself and preferred looks which were not conventional.

Griffith's nickname among her family was "Dee Dee". She was briefly engaged to hurdler Greg Foster.

In 1987, Griffith married 1984 Olympic triple-jump champion Al Joyner, whom Griffith first met at the 1980 Olympic trials. Through her marriage to Joyner, she was sister-in-law to track-and-field athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Griffith and Joyner had one daughter together, Mary Ruth Joyner, born November 15, 1990.

On September 21, 1998, Griffith Joyner died 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 Orange County Sheriff-Coroner's office, which on September 22 declared the cause of death to be suffocation during a severe epileptic seizure.

Griffith Joyner was found to have had a cavernous hemangioma, a congenital vascular brain abnormality that made her predisposed to seizures. According to a family attorney, she had a tonic–clonic seizure in 1990 and had been treated for seizures in 1993 and 1994. According to the Sheriff-Coroner's office, the only drugs in her system when she died were small amounts of two common over-the-counter drugs, acetaminophen and the antihistamine Benadryl.

USA Track & Field inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1995. In 2000, the 102nd Street School in Los Angeles was renamed Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School. Griffith Joyner had attended the school as a child. The city of Mission Viejo dedicated a park at the entrance to her neighborhood in her honor. Griffith Joyner was also an artist and painter. Her work has been on display as part the Art of The Olympians (AOTO). She is one of two posthumous members of AOTO, the other being the founder and Olympian, Al Oerter. In Time's 2020 list of the most influential women of the past century, she was named Woman of the Year for 1988.