The ESPN Story of "Flo Jo" and Al -- Very Touching

...I met her once, in passing at the 96 Trials.

I don't even remember what she said to me, but I was walking past her, and held her gaze as I was thinking "wow, that's Flojo."

And so, as we sometimes do when we spot someone famous in a crowd, I held her gaze a little longer than normal...

I wish I could remember what she said, but she just said something so unaffected, positive and nice... I thought "wow, what a genuinely happy and positive woman, and a class act."

If everyone were as nice as her and Al. the world would be a far better place.

That was without a doubt a very touching article about the love two people can have for one another. Their love was genuine, nothing artificial about it. However, the performances were not and if she was East German the track world would look upon her performances in a different light.

There's no proof.

Jaycee Are wrote:

That was without a doubt a very touching article about the love two people can have for one another. Their love was genuine, nothing artificial about it. However, the performances were not and if she was East German the track world would look upon her performances in a different light.

I'm glad they liked each other

Flojo was a taker of vast quantities of person-enhancing drugs, and all of her "glamorization" was an attempt to disguise that. The vast changes even from 1987 to 1988, including a drastic deepening of the voice, were there for all to see. It's silly for people to even pretend she was "clean."

So your saying you still have no tangible proof right? They also tested her for everything during her autopsy and still did not find any tangible proof.

I think it is silly to accuse people of being dirty with absolutely no factual evidence to back it up.

Dude c'mon. The autopsy simply proved her cause of death. Which was not drug related. The testing involving her performance needed to be done in the year 1988, not 1998. It's not fair too Marlies Gohr and Marita Koch to disregard their performances and glamorize Flojo's.

Why would anyone think an autopsy a decade after the '88 Olympics would find anything?

For that matter, why would anyone think a drug test DURING 1988 would find anything?

Ugh...Bonds, Marion, McGwire...none of them tested positive EITHER, and still they make fools of themselves in court.

Take your head out of the sand.

It's not a matter of anyone's head being in the sand. It's that this article, while very touching indeed, is not proof of Flojos drug use or cleanliness. It's simple an article about Al's relationship with her. By the way, Al Joyner must have been a welcome change from David Mack. Geez.

I posted this on the other thread. It gives some insight into her autopsy.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/sports/2002/03/21/genes/index.html

from the above attachment, Salon Magazine

Keenly aware of the limitations of the human body, athletes and journalists at the Olympic Village speculated on her redefined body and extraordinary performances. Griffith-Joyner angrily dismissed the allegations and volunteered to take a drug test "anytime, anywhere," but it turned out to be an empty promise. There would be no more tests, no more races. She abruptly retired. Darrell Robinson, FloJo's former training partner and national quarter-mile champion, has publicly stated that shortly before the Seoul Games, she had paid him $2,000 for 10 cubic centimeters of human growth hormone, which would not have been picked up in any drug test. She dismissed Robinson as a "crazy, lying lunatic," but she never took legal action against him, and never raced again. After FloJo died suddenly in September 1998, the coroner's report showed that she suffered from "mild cardiac hypertrophy," an unusually enlarged heart, and "occasional interstitial fibrosis" of the heart muscle.

In the years since her death, the suspicions and circumstantial evidence have grown substantially. In 1987, a huge cache of hGH was stolen from London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, only to turn up that summer in the Santa Monica black market. A few months later, Flo-Jo's training partners began noticing dramatic changes in her appearance and performance. "I am astonished by the way Flo-Jo changed from the slightly overweight, sluggish sprinter I was easily able to beat in training in California," says British hurdler Lorna Boothe. Boothe also claims she met a nurse from a San Fernando Valley hospital that claimed Griffith-Joyner was being regularly injected with a steroid-like compound.

Whether such accusations amount to anything more than professional jealousy is an open question. But many prominent doping experts with no axes to grind have expressed serious suspicions about Griffith-Joyner. German scientist Werner Franke, who is credited with exposing the drug and sports machine that turned the former East Germany into a world athletic powerhouse, says flatly that Griffith-Joyner's seizures, which first occurred in 1996, were "symptomatic of the abuse of anabolic drugs or hGH." Former world champion power lifter Mauro Di Pasquale, who was medical director to the World Wrestling Federation and World Bodybuilding Federation and now holds a similar position with NASCAR, says the details of her heart condition and death are consistent with the side effects of such drugs. Even one of Griffith-Joyner's former physicians, sports specialist Robert Kerr, who treated her for an ankle injury, has weighed in on the scandal. "From the combination of her physical appearance and her increased performance," he says, "I believe she was on drugs."

While FloJo's grotesque death dominated headlines, she was not the only Los Angeles area track star to die under suspicious circumstances or suffer from questionable medical ailments. For more than a decade during the 1980s and '90s, the Santa Monica Track Club, led by Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell -- who have both publicly campaigned against performance-enhancing drugs -- dominated world track. After nine SMTC athletes took home medals at the 1991 World Athletic Championships in Tokyo, doping experts pointedly noted the unusual fact that seven of those medal winners, Lewis most prominently, wore dental braces. Less than 1 percent of the adult population wears braces, but crooked teeth is a common side effect of using hGH. Lewis, who never failed a drug test, now suffers from chronic, degenerative arthritis. The SMTC's coach, Joe Douglas, has denied that any of his athletes used performance-enhancing drugs.