LOL.
After looking at both pictures, I asked myself, "That's a woman?" The 80s were the worst time period for women's T&F. It's amazing people didn't raise more eyebrows. It's so blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about athletics. You'd be able to tell Flojo was juiced just by hearing an interview over the radio.
campana wrote:
If wind was the issue in this race, how many other competitors had PRs?
From the All Time World List:
Mark Wind Athlete Pos Venue Date
10.49 0 Florence Griffith-Joyner 1qf1 Indianapolis, IN 16/07/1988
10.83 0 Sheila Echols 1qf2 Indianapolis, IN 16/07/1988
10.86 0 Diane Williams 2qf1 Indianapolis, IN 16/07/1988
10.92 0 Alice Brown 2qf2 Indianapolis, IN 16/07/1988
Also Willie Banks surpassed the triple jump record and Carl Lewis ran 9.78 that day but both were wind aided.
wind shmind- that woman was pumped full of PEDs. she was one of the idrtiest athletes ever. she and marion would be a close contest as to who was the most dirty.
I remember her being interviewed by someone (regis philben, jay leno, letterman...) and she told them she did 10,000 sit ups a day. That's why her stomach was so ripped. She wouldn't have time to do any other training!
I'd love for someone to finally spill the beans on her whole dirty career, but I guess everyone is keeping it dead and buried (yes I did mean to make that pun.)
black rainbow wrote:
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.
Congratulations on using the worst grammar in the history of LR: A sentence with only the word "but", and not even capitalized.
I was there that day and I absolutely don't believe the validity of that time. My pals and I knew that Flo-Jo was "flying" in that race, although (as the tape reveals) she ran as smooth as silk, and never obviously pushed or struggled for the line, etc. It was just a nice, smooth, efficient performance. When the time popped up we laughed out loud...then looked at the wind gauge, expecting to see something "+4.5" or something of that magnitude. When we saw "0.0" we laughed even louder.......but then realized that it was "for real"... Pure and simple; there's NO question the race was windaided. Somehow the windgauge screwed up. But since there's no "proof" of that, the time stays on the record books. Ridiculous, but what can be done?
You can see the men's triple jump in the background of FloJo's record. Here are some results from it:
Willie Banks 18.20 (+5.2)
Charles Simpkins 17.92 (+5.2)
Robert Cannon 17.63 (+4.3)
Mike Conley 17.62 (+3.3)
Al Joyner 17.58 (+5.2)
Kenny Harrison 17.56 (+4.9)
Ray Kimble 17.53 (+4.8)
Ancillary marks include one with +4.9 and a number with no wind indicated.
100m dirty+ possibly wind aided (Flo-Jo)
200m dirty (Flo-Jo)
400m filthy (Marita Koch, 9 out of the top 10 fastest times ever were set between 82-86 by eastern block countries known to systematically dope)
800m dirty (Jarmila Kratochvílová, same story. hopefully Jemilo is legit)
1500m dirty (top 4 times EVER from 2 small meets in China, hmmm)
3000m filthy (one small meet in China, 2 unknown chinese break the wr in a heat, 3 more in another heat and then 5 in the final, the winner going 15 seconds under the old WR, all in the same day)
5000m clean! (Meseret Defar and Dibaba are probably clean)
10000m dirty+possible lap miscount (2 chinese go under the world record, one of them by 40+ seconds, plus of course the meet was in Beijing just 4 days before the 3000m wr. There is no video footage of the race, no first hand race reports, I believe there were no iaaf officials, just Chinese ones and many people speculate that they did not run 25 laps or that it was a short track.)
1/2 and full marathon=clean
SO there you have it, most of the womens records are filthy dirty because they were ran either by eastern block athletes systematical doping, Chinese who ran behind closed doors and sipped turtle soup, or an American who turned into a beast in one year and dropped 1/2 a second off of her Pr and probably had doubtful timing to boot.
Good job Iaaf, you rock.
If I recall, she said she got so fast my doing lot of distance runs.
Remember when she said she was planning on running the marathon at 1992 Olympics.
Maybe she was incorporating lydiard training methods into sprinting. lol
Evrn though she was most likely drugged up, there has not been any drugged up athlete since who could run like that.
How come drugged up Marion couldn't break 10.6?
Marion never got in a race where she got a 4.0-5.0 boost for free...plus I don't think she was doping as hardcore as Flojo was-she was already a star and she had more to lose then flojo who was just good.
Edit to my post-The timing wasn't questionable in indy, just the wind.
ps 10/10, vote Wejo for troll of the year
why did tv announcer say right after the race that it was wind aided , did he just assume this or was he reading something, or did someone tell him ? very doubtful there was no wind whatsoever on such a windy day . my guess is that since it was just a quarter final , person who was supposed to be reading the wind gauge forgot to do so and then lied about it to cover his ass.
As a female athlete, many guys will ask me why I don't know much about the women's track world records.. because they are a f***ing joke! This makes me so sick and seeing those links to so called "Female" athletes is even worse.
Flo jo = complete scum .
No one in their right mind would retire after their best times had just been set. Maybe she was having small seizures before the one that killed her or didn't really like the man voice setting in so soon.. better retire early.
People who really believe that Flo Jo was clean - WAKE UP !
Watch a few videos of Flojo circa 1984-5. It becomes painfully obvious that she is on PEDs by 1988. She has a completely different body, stride, voice, and gained just amazing power.
johnson was a drug cheat either way
Pittsburgh Joe wrote:
and gained just amazing power.
I got the power!
400m filthy (Marita Koch, 9 out of the top 10 fastest times ever were set between 82-86 by eastern block countries known to systematically dope)
3000m filthy (one small meet in China, 2 unknown chinese break the wr in a heat, 3 more in another heat and then 5 in the final, the winner going 15 seconds under the old WR, all in the same day)
good job to fUrCeOsNhN for pointing out all the "women's" WR times. The two above should be thrown out just based on logic. When 9 of the top 10 times in an event are within a 5 year period and then never touched again in the next 20 + years? The Chinese gals did nothing of any note before or after a brief 6 month period. Was that meet in China even a sanctioned meet with runners from other countries?
On a separate note did anyone know that of the top 10 fastest times ever in the men's 400 meters, all ten are held by US athletes. At least according to Wikipedia so maybe that isn't correct
in the men's 400, the top ten athletes are all americans. these ten account for the 71 fastest times. the fastest non-american time is by Gary Kikaya, he ran 44.10 in '06
Only a handful of non-Americans have come within a second of the world record.
Actually, out of the top 70 times ever in the 400m, all 70 are held by Americans. Kind of makes you wonder, as suggested by Lydiard, why we don't have more world class guys in the 800m when we completely dominate the 400m.
Who was Ben Johnson's strength coach? I thought Charlie Francis was his everything coach? Didn't think he worked with Florence.
The gap to the rest of the field in the race is not impressive because it was a QUARTERFINAL. Devers and the rest were just trying to move on at 3/4 effort while Flo was thinking WR. So of course she crushed them. Shoulda been by more, just further evidence of wind influence.
Comparing previous years' body image to '88 is irrelevant. A hard winter of weight lifting can reshape anyone. Look at Michael Jordan. Plus it's not like Flo looked like Kratochvilova. The more telling feature is the voice and the lack of enthusiasm. This is Kelli White without a guilty conscience.
wejo wrote:
I'm sure this has been discussed before but I wanted to open it up again. I'm working on the homepage and read how the Indianapolis track is getting destroyed and its where Flojo ran her 10.49 world record. I always knew people viewed the record as suspect (wind). But then I saw it was in the quarterfinals of the Olympic Trials.
Then I saw an actual video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYdMLIXoPcI bet most of our viewers have never seen the race. She sure doesn't react like she thinks she just smashed the world record. Can some of the old timers explain how this record is still on the books? Or maybe one of the stat geeks.
They even show the wind gauge going off the charts immediately after her run.
I'm not trying to talk trash, but how could you not know this stuff? Might want to ease back on the poker and read up a bit more on the history of the sport if you want to claim to be a track and field journalist.
As for the topic at hand, yeah, it was an absurd run. My jaw hit the floor the first time I saw the video. I really don't think the wind is the major issue, although it certainly adds to the intrigue. She didn't even push to the line... the time itself isn't even the most staggering thing, as staggering as it is... She seriously looks like an alien in slow mo. Her form and power are on a completely different level from the rest of the world class athletes in the race. Incredible.
10.49 is by far the most difficult track WR for either sex, and I can't imagine it isn't the most difficult record including the field events as well. It's obviously a major outlier and illegitimate (I agree that her reaction is very telling), but that doesn't take away from its status as the Mt. Everest of records that might last for literally a century.
Oh, and Liquori's comments are priceless... "They are saying the wind is legal!" "Ahhh... that cannot be, no one can run that fast!"