Florence Griffith-Joyner - Education and Career

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. 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. 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 1983, Griffith graduated from U.C.L.A. 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 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-metre final, she ran a wind-assisted 10.54, beating her nearest rival Evelyn Ashford by 0.30 seconds. In the 200-metre 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 Olympic trials Griffith-Joyner also ran with the four by 100-metre relay and the four by 400-metre relay teams. Her team won first place in the 100m relay and second place in the 400m relay. Their time is still the second fastest in history, following the winner of this race. This was her first internationally-rated four by 400-metre relay. Griffith-Joyner was the winner of the James E. Sullivan Award of 1988 as the top amateur athlete (male or female) in the United States. She retired from competition shortly after that.

Griffith-Joyner's performance in the 100-metre sprint was ranked number 98 on British television's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments, which was telecast in 2002.

In 1996, Griffith-Joyner appeared on the Charlie Rose show, and she announced her comeback to competitive athletics, only this time to concentrate on the 400-metre run. Her reason was that she had already set world marks in both the 100-metre and 200-metre events, with the 400 world record being her goal. Griffith-Joyner trained steadily leading up to the U.S. Olympic trials in June. However, 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.

Among the things she did away from the track was to design the basketball uniforms for the Indiana Pacers NBA team in 1989.

Griffith-Joyner appeared in the soap opera, Santa Barbara in 1992, as "Terry Holloway", a photographer similar to Annie Leibowitz.

Her daughter Mary Ruth Joyner, born in 1990, experimented with many sports as a child, but by her adolescence, she had found her passions in music and dance. In June 2012, Mary auditioned for America's Got Talent as a singer, and she moved on to the rounds in Las Vegas rounds with her dad by her side.