Getup and
Go
Florence Griffith Joyner's dramatic garb made her a
colorful blur as she smashed the world record in the 100 at
the Olympic trials
by Kenny
Moore
Issue date: July 25,
1988
For the quarterfinals, the lady wore purple. As she settled
into the blocks before the second round of the 100 meters
at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Indianapolis
on Saturday, Florence Griffith Joyner's electric-plum
bodysuit caressed her
from neck to ankle. Over it she wore a turquoise bikini
brief. Yet her left leg was bare; somehow it appeared more
naked than any other bare limb in the race. As she crouched
in the blocks, her long orange-black-and-white fingernails
pressed into the
scorched, 115 degrees surface of the Mondo track, and she came
to a
decision.
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(Andy Hayt)
| She had kept an eye on the infield, for two reasons. One,
her husband of less than a year, 1984 Olympic triple jump
champion Al Joyner, had just leaped 57 ft. 8 1/4 in. and
stood an imperiled third with three rounds to
go.
Two, Griffith Joyner needed to keep an eye on the jumpers'
wind readings, because she had discovered in her
first-round heat that she, the Indiana University track,
the temperature and the occasion had all come together to
create historic
possibilities. Clad then in sparkling apple green and revealing stunning
acceleration, she had flown over the 100 in 10.60, the
fastest ever run by a woman. But a torrid, fitful wind had
been gusting from the west. Had it blown her along with
more force than the
allowable 2.0 meters per
second?
For a while no one knew. The wind gauge's display panel had
broken down. But the instrument's reading was preserved in
the computer. At last it was pried out: 3.2 meters per
second. Evelyn Ashford's world record of 10.76, set in
1984, was
safe.
Safe, at least, until this second round of the 100, run 2
1/2 hours later. World records are seldom set in
quarterfinals. ''But you strike when the iron is hot,''
said Bob Kersee, Griffith Joyner's coach, who also is
married—surely you knew—to Jackie
Joyner-Kersee, Al's
sister.
''If you don't feel a gust, go for it now,'' Kersee had
told Griffith Joyner before the heat. ''We'll worry about
making the team
tomorrow.''
So Griffith Joyner, sensing little breeze, struck. And
thereby launched a trials rich in resurgent champions.
Great names like Carl Lewis, Joyner-Kersee, Willie Banks,
Mary Decker Slaney and Edwin Moses would show again that
the hungry tiger hunts best.
And nothing gnaws and growls like Olympic pangs. Griffith
Joyner, fueled on ''vitamins, amino acids and water,'' was
ravenous, bolting to a huge lead by 50
meters.
''I had a good start, a relaxed middle and kept my knees up
at the end,'' she said. ''It was more or less a perfect
race.''
She won by four meters over Diane Williams, crossing the
line an asymmetrical purple streak. ''I didn't design the
suit with any special theory in mind,'' she would say. ''I
just liked it. I call it the
one-legger.''
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Griffith Joyner's remarkable world record came in this quarterfinal heat.
(George Tiedemmann)
| The clock stopped at 10.49, a time so absurdly fast that it
refused to be absorbed. Yeah, sure, everyone thought, the
wind
again....
But when the eye came to rest on the gauge, there it was:
0.0. Apparently no wind at all had spun that little
propeller while Griffith Joyner was
sprinting.
''Incredible!'' cried announcer Bob Hersh. Lord, was that
the
word.
How, when the gauge at the triple jump runway—which
was but 30 feet away—was showing 4.3 meters per
second, had the air on the adjacent track remained
motionless? The official story was that it hadn't. The wind
was just blowing from the side, so no
advantage was given the
runners.
''What seems really possible is that she got a crosswind at
the point of the gauge, but a tail wind at the beginning
and end of her race,'' said Carl Lewis's coach, Tom Tellez.
If so, the purpose of having a gauge at a single location
would seem to have
been
defeated.
How could this converted 200-meter runner, in only her
fourth serious 100, take a huge .27 of a second off the
world record? That's 2 1/2 times the slice Ben Johnson cut
from the men's 100 record last year with his watershed
9.83. According to
projections based on past improvements, no woman was supposed to
reach even 10.65 until the year
2000.
''When I saw the time, I couldn't believe it,'' said
Griffith Joyner. ''But the 10.60 had made me realize I
could get into the 10.50's. It made me realize if I kept
concentrating, I could go
faster.''
Griffith Joyner, 28, has always been an excellent sprinter
but never a record breaker. She took the 200-meter silver
in the L.A. Olympics behind Valerie Brisco-Hooks. But by
1986 she was working as a bank secretary and was, Kersee
confidently informed
the press, ''60 pounds
overweight.''
''You said 60 pounds?'' gasped Griffith Joyner. ''It was
15!''
''You were this wide,'' said Kersee. ''I couldn't tell
whether you were coming or
going.''
''It was after the bank potluck, and I had macaroni and
cheese and peach cobbler ... and ... and the scale was
broken!''
Whatever it was, Kersee shamed her into the weight room and
things started to
improve.
She placed second to East Germany's Silke Gladisch in the
1987 World Championships 200. She married Joyner. New
strength gave her a better start. ''Now she's putting
acceleration in front of that amazing velocity,'' said
Kersee. ''But I'd be a liar if I
said I saw
10.49.''
She had run 10.89 in San Diego in late June. Her husband
found he could no longer beat her at 100 yards. ''I figured
10.58 off training with her,'' said Joyner. ''She's learned
to sprint relaxed and smooth. And hey, it's the trials.
It's in the
atmosphere. The athletes are breathing it in, the pressure, the ...
the
...''
The heat. These trials, predictably, arrived in the midst
of a midwestern furnace. Sprinters, warming easily and
cooling slowly, went happily mad. Distance runners had to
give thought to their survival. ''Call them murder
trials,'' groaned Slaney's
coach, Luiz de
Oliveira.
David Martin, the physiologist who works with the TAC/USOC
Elite Athlete Project, was asked whether it was safe to
send off runners under these conditions. ''Hard to say,''
he said. ''No country in the last century has been stupid
enough to run its
trials in these
conditions.''
Better to pray for the athletes' safety and rejoin the
sprinters to marvel at Griffith Joyner in a black
two-legger winning her 100 semi in 10.70 with a legal
1.6-meter wind, her third race faster than Ashford's 10.76
world
record.
Then she returned for the final in electric blue and white,
her nails now a throbbing pink. Kersee stationed himself at
the midpoint of the track. At the gun, he yelled, ''There
you go!'' and himself bolted for the finish. Griffith
Joyner beat him there
in 10.61, this with a legal 1.2-meter wind. If, somehow,
her 10.49 should be denied because of questions about the
wind gauge, that 10.61 will be the new world record. She
also beat Ashford (10.81) and Gwen Torrence (10.91), who,
with her, will make up
the strongest American sprint entry ever sent to an
Olympics.
''My eyes are really opened,'' said Ashford. In fact, they
had a Lewis-like gleam of determination. ''I'm going to
have to really run this
year.''
Griffith Joyner calmly turned her thoughts to the 200, to
be run this week, and wouldn't be drawn into the furor over
what the wind might really have been doing in her
10.49.
Yet her winning 10.61, under no such cloud, proves that she
has revolutionized women's sprinting. One suspects that her
purple 10.49, so wholly unexpected, will become, like Bob
Beamon's 20-year-old long jump record of 29 ft. 2 1/2 in.,
historic for its
sheer
mystery.
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