Was FloJo clean?

100% science experiment wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

I find that hard to believe and even harder to believe that it could have been kept secret all these years. Why didn't you blow the lid on the story?

It was 31 years ago. I was 19 years old, and there was certainly no internet. The former USA Today T and F writer would corroborate the story. He was in the room when the meeting to decide what to do took place. What does it even matter now? You’d have to be a fool to believe she wasn’t on drugs even not knowing the backstory.

That's ridiculous. A decision like that was made with a reporter in the room? She was also tested at the trials, so the cover-up would have involved several lab techs and and at least two labs. The decision would have had to go to the top so there could have been as many as twenty people involved and that included one that spilled the story to a 19-year old. That would have been a massive story at the time and for sure a lab tech would have sold it for big bucks.

Flo-Jo was one of the most blatantly obvious extreme doping cases in T&F history.

Yes.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

You don't know for a fact that there were hundreds of athletes who simply adjusted their methods of intake. Would that mean there wasn't a single day out of the year that they would test positive?

You’re right - I don’t know for a fact, and no one else does either. I can go only go by what I’ve read about this sport, especially the era of the late 1980s. What I mean is this - most athletes on drugs at that time successfully adjusted to out of competition testing, and continued their drug protocols. This is self-evidently true, as track is nowhere clean in the 1990s.

Presumably the same option was available to Joyner, who had the resources to Arrange her drug protocols to avoid positive tests to the extent possible.

Yet she chose not to, and instead retired. This seems illogical to me. Therefore I conclude that she was forced to retire, and that the conspiracy theory has a high probability of success.

100% science experiment wrote:

It was 31 years ago. I was 19 years old, and there was certainly no internet. The former USA Today T and F writer would corroborate the story. He was in the room when the meeting to decide what to do took place. What does it even matter now? You’d have to be a fool to believe she wasn’t on drugs even not knowing the backstory.

Why did the journalist not write about what he/she saw? Was it told him on background? Was he serving in some official capacity at the time?

Flojos mechanics were undeniably clean. Anyone serious about running movement patterns is doing themselves a huge disservice if they aren’t studying the way she ran. Absolutely phenomenal.

FlowingOnTheJoe wrote:

To compete with East Germany and Russia I’m guessing no. Thoughts?

I met her once. She was very clean. And very nice. Approachable. Classy lady.

coach wrote:

Like Really Bro wrote:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/11/02/sports/02flojo2print/02flojo2print-superJumbo-v3.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

Need you say more?

If you juxtapose this picture with one from her college days (her face is very different) it is even more obvious.

Couldn't you find more than a few women with similar musculature definition at any college meet? This picture is not proof.

FlowingOnTheJoe wrote:

To compete with East Germany and Russia I’m guessing no. Thoughts?

And yet she made all those mega dopers look slow didn't she?

Which most drug endorsers ignore don't they?...... Well don't they???

Drugs or no drugs, a woman needs to be able to run 11 meters per second to run 10.49 and do years of training to develop the speed endurance. Without that basic speed, drugs or no drugs, it ain't happening. Another point that all the drug endorsers ignore, because really, they are clueless.

not sprintgeezer wrote:

FlowingOnTheJoe wrote:

To compete with East Germany and Russia I’m guessing no. Thoughts?

And yet she made all those mega dopers look slow didn't she?

Which most drug endorsers ignore don't they?...... Well don't they???

Drugs or no drugs, a woman needs to be able to run 11 meters per second to run 10.49 and do years of training to develop the speed endurance. Without that basic speed, drugs or no drugs, it ain't happening. Another point that all the drug endorsers ignore, because really, they are clueless.

For years, up to '87, she was an 11sec 100m runner and 22-low 200m runner. Her improvement in '88 was if Bolt went from a 10.1 to 9.5x runner in a season and from a 20-flat 200m runner to 19.3x runner in the same period.

The only clean part of her was her getaway.

She got serious in '87

You people like to pretend you are anti doping, but your such a bunch of drug endorsers and you can't see how deluded that is. You obsessive endorse drugs, again and again.

A woman needs 11 meter per second maximum speed to be as fast as Flojo. Top speed is a genetic trait. It has nothing to do with drugs, but you are so obsessed you can't see it.

Little Red Corvette wrote:

I always thought it was weird that she was so conscious of her appearance and yet she left her mustache apart from shaving it.

+1

Track & Field News ran pics from her college days to her subsquent Bobby Kersee coached days with no real commentary but still made the point.. She was jacked,

but cause of death was asthma?? Sure.

1955 wrote:

Sadly, apparently the drugs contributed to her early demise.

I have never seen anything linking her death to PEDs. Certainly the medical examiner's report found nothing.

Do you have a link? That would be helpful, and informative.

Or was your statement based on nothing but speculation? . . . In which case, "apparently" is definitely the wrong word.

not sprintgeezer wrote:

She got serious in '87

You people like to pretend you are anti doping, but your such a bunch of drug endorsers and you can't see how deluded that is. You obsessive endorse drugs, again and again.

A woman needs 11 meter per second maximum speed to be as fast as Flojo. Top speed is a genetic trait. It has nothing to do with drugs, but you are so obsessed you can't see it.

And speaking of obsessed - here you are. Again. You left out your usual spiel about thermodynamics.

lease wrote:

1955 wrote:

Sadly, apparently the drugs contributed to her early demise.

I have never seen anything linking her death to PEDs. Certainly the medical examiner's report found nothing.

Do you have a link? That would be helpful, and informative.

Or was your statement based on nothing but speculation? . . . In which case, "apparently" is definitely the wrong word.

I've read she was epileptic and her death was supposedly related to that.

Armstronglivs wrote:

not sprintgeezer wrote:

She got serious in '87

You people like to pretend you are anti doping, but your such a bunch of drug endorsers and you can't see how deluded that is. You obsessive endorse drugs, again and again.

A woman needs 11 meter per second maximum speed to be as fast as Flojo. Top speed is a genetic trait. It has nothing to do with drugs, but you are so obsessed you can't see it.

And speaking of obsessed - here you are. Again. You left out your usual spiel about thermodynamics.

Pointing out how convinced you are that your drug endorsements are delusional.

You're on the wrong threads. Climate-change denial and anti-vaxxing are over there.

I was an official at one of the NCAA Outdoor T + F Champs in the early 80's. When not working one of the field events or timing I took photographs. in a shoebox somewhere i have a couple of spontaneous photos of UCLA's Florence Griffith. Short hair, very feminine and attractive.

People forget she competed in the '84 Olympics and won a silver in 22.04. After '85 she basically retired and went to work in a bank. Then, in 1987, she married Al Joyner and decided to make a comeback with Team Kersee. She was out of the sport for almost two years when she decided to make a comeback and run these amazing times. The Oly Trials Finals I still remember watching the broadcast. Marty Liquori was incredulous and said "no one can run that fast!" My ex-college teammates were all laughing at how her physique had changed and how long before she got busted.

If I recall correctly her last race was at the Olympics. Must be a good reason to sacrifice the appearance $ you're going to make post-Olympics, or even to just keep competing for its own sake. Maybe she needed to preserve her rep. Heck, Pres. Bush even put her on the President's Council for Physical Fitness.

Re: her death. Cause of death asthma. But other folks speculated her heart valves were damaged from 'roid abuse, which aggravated the asthma she already had. Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger about valve damage and heart surgery. He had his at age 49. People know the truth but what's the point now other than to group her in with the Armstrongs, Johnsons, and Joneses.

Given what I know and have seen firsthand the last forty years there's no doubt in my mind people are still cheating. As the BALCO scandal revealed the chemists are always one step ahead of the testers.

Anyway, if I i find that photo from her at NCAA Champs I'll post.

Unfinished business in the 400. Her retirement suspect.

ESPN supposedly doing a 30 for 30 special on her this season. Wonder if they address the "suspicions".