Flojo's 10.49

you think? wrote:

im not an expert on this. i don't know what the arguement is against her.....but they do say, at the time of the run and IMMEDIATELY after that it was within legal limits for a record. maybe it was higher after the run, but it seems like it was low enough during for her to get it.

Uh, the wind was over the legal limit all day but somehow read 0.00 during her race. I find it hard to believe that it blew 20mph all day and then went completely calm for 15 or so seconds, only to regain it's 20+mph speed.

Flojo's 100m record is the dumbest record in the books. She was more man than I am, and she had a very ILLEGAL wind. I can't believe it's official.

The real question here is why is she wearing tights with only one leg?

You can seen the backs of the uniforms fluttering in the wind when they are getting in to the blocks. Def not a 0.0 wind.

weird pants wrote:

The real question here is why is she wearing tights with only one leg?

She is wearing half-tights...LITERALLY.

sadly. everyone knew it was not just the wind that was wrong with florence. she was physically very different than the year before.

the wind was strong that day. but. she ran strong in the olympics as well. she was the class of the field despite the wind. She couldn't even get into the same races with Merlene Ottey in europe the year before.

i have always believed that she was a cheat. media darling. money and attention for the sport in a low market arena of the US. We had just hosted a summer olympics a few years prior yet the sport was back page at best. She, not King Carl, moved track and field from the back page to the front page. made it relevant again in the US. There is no way that she was ever gonna be allowed to be exposed...

kinda like marion and he 5 gold medals. how many magazines can you remember he gracing the covers of that summer of 2000. marion was not allowed to be caught...

it's a shame. all of it.

I'm not sure why they keep this record around, there appears to be a tailwind.

Taking away the 10.49 doesn't change who has the record however. Behind that mark are three more in front of Ottey and Evelyn Ashford. If you want to use the 10.61 from the Indy final or the 10.62 from Seoul as the real record, go for it.

Florence Griffith-J USA 10,61 88/07/17 +1.2 Indianapolis

Griffith-J USA 10,62 88/09/24 +1.0 Seoul OG

Griffith-J USA 10,70 88/07/17 +1.6 Indianapolis

Merlene Ottey JAM 10,74 96/09/07 +1,3 Milan

Evelyn Ashford USA 10,76 84/08/22 +1.7 Zurich

i saw that race on tv. there was something supernatural about the way she covered the last 30 meters. i didn't see it in anyone again for 20 years -- then usain bolt literally bolted away from everyone halfway through his 100m.

she resembled the most elite male sprinter in the way she lifted and powered through that race.

these cheats delude themselves when they think they're fooling everyone. people like me, lifelong track people with some scientific training, who see these athletes year after year, sometimes seeing their athletic development from all the way back to childhood, have no trouble identifying the cause of drastic, unnatural gains in performance. we all know how much a woman can change and enhance her body through rigorous -- natural -- training; we know changes will only be moderate and subtle. what an elite sprinter doesn't do, for example, is drop 3-5 tenths from her 100m during her mid-20's, over the course of one or two seasons, while adding 15 pounds of lean muscle. it just can't happen to a female body that has been heretofore similarly training for several years.

look at video of flojo pre-1988, compare it to 1988 -- there's obvious masculinization. she went from a very feminine/soft appearance to downright beastly compared to her competition. look at video of marion early 2000's, compare 2004 -- obvious masculinization.

there are so many others. all you need to do is check the results: when you see a big jump in speed, investigate the footage, compare the physique, and you'll always see masculinization.

here's another one for you: merlene ottey. running 100m pr's in her mid 30's. well, i have video of her in her mid 20's, and when you compare them -- voila! much more muscular, and faster 10 years later. her body only changed late in her career, when she celebrated her sprinting renaissance.

miki barber, good college runner, compared to miki barber, suddenly elite 100m star: much more muscular.

how about kellie white? geez, i watched run in high school, then in college; then i see her run in the world championships and, wow, look at those muscles! next thing, she runs big pr's. the only way women become muscular is through drugs...it's a simple enough equation. anyone tells you otherwise is uneducated or lying.

adult female sprinters, with an athletics' history behind them, don't just suddenly ascend to a new plane of sprinting superiority. they just became cynical and decided to take the money, along with a newfound moral relativism.

oh well, we can always think of evelyn ashford and smile...those were the good old days.

That is what happens when you get a wayward official standing in front of the wind meter, blocking the wind.

I'm surprised the record stands for other reasons.

I have no proof FloJo juiced except for the following items.

She was a career 11.0 100 meter sprinter. Always pretty good but never the best. She ran for several years as a pro sprinter with her best times always around 11.0 to 11.1.

Then all of a sudden one year indoor she starts winning and during an interview at one indoor meet she is asked about her new success and she says she has been adding more strength training and working with Ben Johnson's strength coach (this was prior to Ben getting busted).

Then in the outdoor season she lowers her 100 meter PR by half a second. Well actually .3 of a second (huge in the 100) then gets the wind-aided flyer in the WR race to give her the last .2 seconds.

FloJo was alot more muscular during her record year then earlier in her career. She then retires from track after her record breaking year. How many athletes retire after their best year?

Then FloJo dies a few years later via natural causes at a very young age.

While there is no hard evidence she was a PED user there is a ton of circumstantial evidence.

To me this one is like the Barry Bonds case. No hard evidence but you just sort of know the person is very likley guilty.

In my mind Evelyn Ashford was the best clean women's sprinter of all time and someone I can hold up to my kids as a roll model.

I believe that Flojo was as dirty as they come and that this record is wind-aided.

However, on what grounds are you going to strip her of the record? Surely if there were ever grounds to do it, the time would have been at ratification. I don't think there is either procedure or precedent to do it based off of a video and the thoughts of a bunch of jack-offs here on Letsrun.com, even if the head jack-off himself agrees.

EVERY women's running world record, with the possible exception of the marathon, is so dirty that it is unlikely that any of them will be broken again. Unless, of course, a new and better undetectable regime of drugs becomes available.

It has been documented how Marita Koch, Heike Dreschler and the whole East German team had their success clearly based on systematic drug usage. That holds true for the whole Eastern Bloc of the 80's, with Frankenstein-like results in athletes like Jarmila Kratochvilova in addition to whole relay teams of the Soviets and the DDR. Kratochvilova was so freakish looking it was hard to look at her, from the incredibly square jaw to the huge, cut muscles to the total lack of feminine features such as breasts.

The Chinese distance crew may have trained on turtle soup, but they also used enough performance enhancing drugs to get their evil, nutty coach kicked out of the sport.

If I remember the article correctly, when asked how a sprinter in her mid 20's drops a half second on her 100 time in a year, she said she was doing longer intervals like 400's to make herself stronger. Young sprinters would be best advised not to try this regime.

Maybe we should start new records which we refer to as 21st century records. At least the drugs used now are producing less spectacular results.

The announcer even mentions that this is better than Ben Johnson's run, which also puts it into perspective.

but said that she is training for a marathon, which "explained" why she lost so much muscle mass.cute.

Former 5k Guy wrote:

FloJo was alot more muscular during her record year then earlier in her career.

If wind was the issue in this race, how many other competitors had PRs?

ringo wrote:

The announcer even mentions that this is better than Ben Johnson's run, which also puts it into perspective.

just realize he's referencing ben johnson's 9.83 from rome, and not the 9.79 from seoul.

Former 5k Guy wrote:

Then FloJo dies a few years later via natural causes at a very young age.

.

It is funny how falsehoods like this simply will not die no matter how many times they are corrected.

Florence Griffith Joyner died from asphyxiation caused by an epileptic seizure. That was the coroner's report. That is not "natural causes". She had epilepsy. It killed her. The end.

Really if you want to tell us how you think Flojo was dirty, be my guest. I do not care enough to try to spoil anyone's fun. But if you are going speculate about it, please to not continue to perpetuate myths.

whirledpeas wrote:

we all know how much a woman can change and enhance her body through rigorous -- natural -- training; we know changes will only be moderate and subtle.

Sort of like these subtle hints of masculinity in the otherwise petite, shapely and alluring Fatima Whitbread, right?

Looks like something went horribly awry on a mad scientist's remote island.

Nothing masculine about Ana Guevara either ...

... except for the whole Adam's apple thing going on. Speaking of Guevaras, are we sure Che is really dead? I mean, let Ana's facial hair grow out just enough to get that rebel, Planet-Of-The-Apes-military-personnel look, and there you have a spitting image of the guerilla leader himself. Hmmm, maybe I'm onto something.

merlene ottey.

Maybe when somebody keeps winning global championship medals at age 70 and retains all the youthful characteristics of a 20-year-old, they won't be given the benefit of the doubt anymore.

Let that ass hang out baby.. ow ow

Agree with previous posters:

1. FloJo's 10.49 was wind-aided, and there was an anemometer screw-up. (T&FN pointed out that others in her heat also PRed massively.)

[By the way, Bob Beamon's Mexico City LJ was also almost certainly windy.]

2. Even without the 10.49, FloJo would still have the WR; it would just be a little slower (and a little more approachable).

P.S. I forgot to mention how fitting it is that the site is called "sporting heroes," since it looks like the Frankenstein Labs, Inc. product in that picture might have been sporting something at the time.

Fatima Whitbread had laid claim to be the best javelin thrower in the world in 1986, ...

P.P.S. It would be greatly appreciated if this was the last time anyone ever used "Fatima Whitbread" and "laid" in the same article.