49 Fun Facts About Florence Griffith Joyner

What was the young Florence Griffith wearing around her neck when she was asked to leave a shopping mall?

A pet boa constrictor, draped like a feather boa, got her thrown out of the mall. The same nerve later sent her to the US Olympic trials in one-legged bodysuits.

Whose 100 m world record did Griffith Joyner break at the 1988 US Olympic trials?

Evelyn Ashford's 10.76 had stood for four years. Griffith Joyner ran under it three times in under 24 hours at the trials, then beat Ashford herself to the Olympic title.

As of 2025, which of Griffith Joyner's 1988 world records still stands?

Both still stand as of 2025. The 100 m is the surprise: before that summer she was rated a 200 m specialist and no contender at the shorter sprint.

Which sprinter's positive drug test at the 1988 Olympics threw a shadow of suspicion over Griffith Joyner's golds?

Ben Johnson lost his 100 m gold within days of winning it. With sprinting under a cloud, her sudden leap in speed drew doping whispers that she always denied.

Before Griffith Joyner in 1988, who was the only woman to win four track and field medals at one Olympics?

Fanny Blankers-Koen was a 30-year-old mother of two whom some experts called too old. She won four golds in London in 1948, and forty years on Griffith Joyner's three golds and a silver made her the second.

In which relay did Griffith Joyner win her only silver at the 1988 Olympics?

The 4 x 400 was never in her plans: drafted in two days before, she ran the anchor leg and could not catch Olha Bryzhina of the Soviet Union, the Olympic 400 m champion.

What did Griffith Joyner start doing well before the line in the 1988 Olympic 100 m final?

Smiling: she was so far clear soon after halfway that the grin came long before the finish. She still won easily in 10.54.

Which piece of equipment is widely thought to have failed during Griffith Joyner's 10.49 run in 1988?

The wind gauge read 0.0 for her race, although nearly every other sprint that afternoon, and the jumps runway beside the track, recorded strong tailwinds. The 10.49 was ratified anyway.

Which sprinter equalled Griffith Joyner's 10.61 in the 2020 Olympic 100 m final and beat it in Eugene in 2021?

Elaine Thompson-Herah won the Tokyo final in 10.61 at the head of a Jamaican medal sweep, matching Griffith Joyner's 1988 trials-final time. Three weeks later she ran 10.54 in Eugene.

In which Los Angeles neighbourhood's Jordan Downs public housing complex did Griffith grow up?

Watts is where her mother raised eleven children on her own in the Jordan Downs project. Florence, the seventh, was racing at weekend track meets by the age of seven.

What did the young Florence Griffith chase across the Mojave Desert on visits to her father?

Jackrabbits were the quarry, and by her own account she eventually caught one. By the age of seven she had moved on to weekend track meets.

Which youth athletics event did Florence Griffith win two years running, at ages 14 and 15?

The Jesse Owens National Youth Games crowned her at 14 and again at 15. The name came back round in 1988, when she won the Jesse Owens Award as the year's outstanding track and field athlete.

What job did Griffith take when she had to drop out of college to support her family?

Bank teller was the job she took in 1979 after leaving Cal State Northridge to support her family. Her sprint coach found her financial aid, and in 1980 she followed him to UCLA.

In what subject did Griffith graduate from UCLA in 1983?

Psychology was the UCLA degree she finished in 1983, the year she won her second NCAA title. She had moved there in 1980 to follow the sprint coach who got her back into college.

Why did the sprinters who beat Griffith at the 1980 US trials never race in Moscow?

The US boycotted the Games over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, so the trials picked a team that never travelled. Griffith, fourth in the 200 m, had missed it by a single place anyway.

Which teammate beat Griffith to 200 m gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics?

Valerie Brisco-Hooks won in an Olympic record 21.81. Griffith, disappointed with silver, slipped into semi-retirement and did not train seriously again until 1987.

In which city did Griffith Joyner take 200 metres silver at the 1987 World Championships?

Rome came barely four months after she returned to the track in April 1987 from semi-retirement. She still took silver behind East Germany's Silke Gladisch and added gold in the sprint relay.

Which addition to her training did Griffith Joyner credit for much of her sudden speed in 1988?

Heavy weight training was her answer to anyone who asked: squats built the legs for a faster start out of the blocks. Rivals who saw the new muscle suspected something else.

In which event had Al Joyner, the man Griffith married in 1987, won Olympic gold three years earlier?

Triple jump: Al Joyner won it at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, where Griffith took her 200 m silver. The two had first met at the 1980 trials, and he later became her full-time coach.

What did Griffith Joyner set out to write a series of after retiring from the track?

Children's books were the writing project she talked up when she retired in 1989, and a series followed. She also wrote romance fiction, designed clothes and launched a cosmetics line.

Which coach did Griffith Joyner leave in July 1988, saying she wanted more personal attention?

Bob Kersee had coached her since college, but a week after the 1988 trials she left him over money and a lack of attention. Her husband Al took over, and by October she was a triple Olympic champion.

What did US coaches blame when they left Griffith off the sprint relay team at the 1984 Olympics?

Her long fingernails, the coaches feared, would stop her passing the baton safely. Four years later she kept the nails, ran the third leg and won relay gold with the US in Seoul.

What unusual garment did Griffith Joyner wear at the 1987 World Championships?

A hooded speed-skating body suit was only a first taste. At the 1988 US trials she wore a different outfit in every race, among them the one-legged suits she designed herself.

What did the teenage Griffith persuade her high-school track team to wear with their uniforms?

She talked her Jordan High team into racing in tights, an early sign of her flair; by graduation in 1978 she held school records in the sprints and the long jump.

Which rule did US track officials approve shortly after Griffith Joyner retired in 1989?

Random drug testing, year-round, was voted in the following month, and the timing fed the rumours. Her own explanation was simpler: business offers had left her no time to train.

Which honour for the top US amateur athlete did Griffith Joyner receive for 1988?

The James E. Sullivan Award, given since 1930 to the top US amateur athlete, went to her for 1988. By the ceremony in March 1989 she had already announced her retirement from racing.

Which country's advertisers rushed to sign Griffith Joyner after the 1988 Olympics?

Japan grabbed her first, signing her for adverts within weeks of the Games. She said work like that left her no time to train, and she retired within five months.

For which NBA team did Griffith Joyner design the uniforms in 1989?

Indiana Pacers players, Reggie Miller among them, wore her design for seven seasons from 1990. The kit became known as the FloJos.

In which soap opera did Griffith Joyner appear in 1992, playing a photographer named Terry Holloway?

Santa Barbara, the NBC daytime soap, cast her in a recurring role as an Annie Leibovitz-style celebrity photographer. After years in front of the lens, she was playing the person behind it.

Which body did Bill Clinton name Griffith Joyner to co-chair in 1993?

The President's Council on Physical Fitness had last been chaired by Arnold Schwarzenegger. She shared the job with former congressman Tom McMillen and held it until her death in 1998.

Which event did Griffith Joyner target when she attempted an Olympic comeback in 1996?

The 400 m was a return, not a leap: she had been NCAA champion at the distance in 1983. But she was 36 and had been retired for seven years.

Which boxer's youth foundation took the young Florence Griffith to weekend track meets?

Sugar Ray Robinson's youth foundation took her to track meets every weekend while she was in elementary school. Decades later she and her husband set up a youth foundation of their own for disadvantaged children.

What congenital condition, found at autopsy, had left Griffith Joyner prone to seizures?

A cavernous hemangioma in the brain, a cluster of weak blood vessels she was born with, lay behind the seizure that killed her in her sleep. She had been hospitalised after another seizure on a flight in 1996.

What did former US sprinter Darrell Robinson claim in 1989 to have sold Griffith Joyner for $2,000?

Human growth hormone was his claim, and it was never proven. Her reply became famous: he was a 'compulsive, crazy, lying lunatic'.

What did the IOC's medical chief say of the extra drug tests Griffith Joyner faced in 1988?

Nothing was ever found, said Prince Alexandre de Merode: she had been singled out for every possible analysis. 'There should not be the slightest suspicion,' he added after her death.

How did Griffith top up her day-job wage during her break from serious sprinting in the mid-1980s?

Braiding hair for friends kept her solvent when she all but quit sprinting after the 1984 Games. Four years later she was an Olympic champion earning millions from endorsements.

Which track star told university students, months after the 1988 Olympics, that 'very reliable sources' said Griffith Joyner used steroids?

Carl Lewis thought he was speaking off the record at the University of Pennsylvania. Her manager accused him of trying to rob the world's children of a role model.

Which magazine's 2020 project '100 Women of the Year' chose Griffith Joyner as its woman for 1988?

Time revisited every year from 1920 and named a woman for each. In 1988 itself the magazine had skipped people and named the Endangered Earth its Planet of the Year.

What was renamed in Griffith Joyner's honour in Los Angeles in 2000?

Her old elementary school, until then named only for its street address, became Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary in January 2000. She was a pupil there when, at about seven, she first started to run.

Which round of the 1988 Olympic 200 m brought Griffith Joyner a world record that lasted under two hours?

The semi-final took the record from 21.71 to 21.56. Less than two hours later she broke her own mark, winning the final in 21.34.

Which Olympic race did the retired Griffith Joyner say she dreamed of running?

The marathon was her dream, she said, because she had always loved distance running. She trained for long-distance running in retirement, but the ambition was never realised.

Which nickname did the family of Florence Griffith, whose other given name was Delorez, use for her?

Dee Dee was her name at home, where 'Florence' already meant her mother. The wider world came to call her Flo-Jo in the summer of 1988.

Which event did Al Joyner's sister Jackie, Griffith Joyner's sister-in-law, win with a world record at the 1988 Olympics?

Heptathlon gold had escaped Jackie by five points in 1984. At the Games where her sister-in-law swept the sprints, she won it with a world record.

On which NBC sitcom did Griffith Joyner make a guest appearance after her Olympic triumph?

227 starred Marla Gibbs, fresh from The Jeffersons. Griffith Joyner's cameo began a sideline in acting that later took in a daytime soap.

What did a toy company launch in Griffith Joyner's name after the 1988 Olympics?

A doll called Flo-Jo was introduced after she retired in 1989. As a girl she had sewn clothes for her own dolls; now there was one of her.

Bill Clinton's 1998 tribute to Griffith Joyner ran: 'dazzled by her speed, humbled by her talent and captivated by her' what?

Style was the word, apt for a sprinter who designed her own racing suits. He added that she never forgot where she came from, giving time and money to children in need.

What did Griffith Joyner's mother build the weekly family meetings of her eleven children around?

The Bible supplied a verse or story for each weekly meeting, where the children looked back over their week. It was how a single mother kept eleven children in line in a Los Angeles housing project.

Which pastime put Griffith Joyner among the members of Art of the Olympians, a group of Olympic athletes turned artists?

Painting filled part of a retirement spent acting, writing and designing clothes. Art of the Olympians was founded only in 2006, eight years after she died, and made her a member anyway.

What ended Griffith Joyner's 1996 comeback attempt before the US Olympic trials?

Tendinitis in her right leg kept her from even starting the US trials that June. That spring she had also suffered a seizure on a flight, a warning of what was to come.