Summary
Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner
December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998
Notable: Athlete
Nationality: American
Media
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Show Notes
Florence Delorez Griffith was born in Los Angeles, LA on December 21, 1959. Her father Robert was an electrician while her mother Delores was a seamstress. Seventh of her parents’ eleven children, Griffith spent her early years in the small desert town of Littlerock, California. For exercise, her mother would have the children line up in their backyard and run to her. To improve her speed, Griffith chased jackrabbits.
When Griffith was six years old, her parents divorced. She moved with her mother and siblings to the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts. The Watts riots occurred in August 1965 and Jordan Downs was a key location in the riots and organizing in the 1960s. In the aftermath of the riots, Jordan Downs received relatively little federal funds.
It’s unclear if Griffith and her family were already living in the area during the riots. But even aside from the riots, Jordan Downs could be a dangerous neighborhood. To keep her children safe and out of trouble, Griffith’s mother forbade them from roaming the projects unsupervised. They were a tight-knit unit with weekly family meetings supervised by their mother.
Griffith played basketball and football with her brothers and their friends. When they had handstand competitions and footraces in the street, she won. Eventually, they began to exclude her from their games, citing that she was a girl. When Griffith was seven, she joined the Sugar Ray Robinson Organization and ran in weekend track meets. Her talent as a fast runner began to show from this early age.
Despite growing up in Jordan Downs, Griffith dreamed that she would grow up to live a fabulous life. When rejected by her brothers and their friends, she occupied her time playing in her mother’s closet. Griffith would dress up in her mother’s dresses and shoes to act out scenes from her future life of splendor. She drew designs of gowns and dresses for the parties she planned to attend. Yet, her visions of fame and achievement were criticized for being unrealistic by some of the children and adults around her.
Griffith and her siblings spent time at their father’s home in the Mojave Desert. He placed great emphasis on the children speaking “proper” English. The resulting exaggerated manner of speech was unlike the diction used by other kids in the neighborhood. Griffith was insecure as a child and her lifelong shyness came across as being aloof. She had a slight lisp that she attempted to hide by articulating words in the manner modeled by her father. The combination of these traits resulted in her being viewed as stuck-up.
The criticism and social isolation hurt Griffith and made her cry as a child. Yet, instead of changing to fit the status quo, she leaned into being different. Griffith began to express herself more through her quirky hairstyles and style of dress, sewing some of her clothes from age seven. While she stopped sharing her dreams of greatness with everyone, she held on to those dreams. And she used her hurt feelings of rejection as motivation in track and field.
At age 14 and 15 years old, Griffith won back-to-back Jesse Owens National Youth Games. She showed early signs of her later flair for fashionable track outfits by talking her high school relay teammates into wearing long tights with their uniforms. As a student at the local Jordan High School, Griffith set school records in the long jump and sprints.
During the CIF state meet, Griffith came to the attention of Bob Kersee, track coach at Cal State Northridge. She enrolled at Northridge after graduating from high school in 1978. Under Kersee’s guidance, Griffith showed improvement on the track and was a part of the national title-winning track team. Unfortunately, financial issues forced Griffith to drop out in 1979 and she found work as a bank teller to support herself and help her family.
Kersee became the assistant coach at UCLA where Griffith enrolled after he helped her obtain financial aid. She placed fourth in the 200-meter final for the 1980 Olympics. Disappointed in her performance and having missed the opportunity to travel to the Olympics with some of her friends and UCLA teammates, Griffith began a grueling training regimen. She was attempting to change her body to fit the then-model for running races. (The 1980 games were ultimately boycotted by America).
In 1982 and 1983, Griffith respectively won 200m and 400m NCAA titles and was part of the UCLA teams that won back-to-back national titles. In the summer of 1983, Griffith completed her psychology degree and came in fourth in the 200m at the World Championships. In 1984, at the Los Angeles Olympics, Griffith won the silver medal in the 200m.
Without sponsorship deals or other forms of financial support, even Olympic medal winners can find themselves having to work regular jobs between competitions. Griffith did not earn enough from track to allow her to only focus on training for competitions. Instead, she semi-retired and went back to work as a bank teller while doing hair and nails on the side.
With the 1988 Olympics looming, Griffith returned to serious training in 1987. Going back to her childhood, Griffith had been slow out of the starting block which was discouraged as it requires runners to work harder in the middle and end of a race. Griffith had been frustrated to tears with her inability to improve her slow starts. Now, her coaches accepted this and she leaned into improving rather than changing her natural running style. She won a silver medal in the 200m at the 1987 World Championships.
She dressed in ways that were discouraged for sprinters. Griffith wore jewelry, figure-fitting one-legged track outfits, extravagant six-inch nails, and her flowing long hair was left down. This was combined with a rigorous training regimen that saw her training at 4 AM and squatting 320 pounds while weighing 130 pounds. When Griffith married Al Joyner in October 1987, she became Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner and completed her transformation by accepting the moniker “Flo Jo”.
Griffith Joyner kept Kersee as her official coach through the Olympic trials but had been working with Joyner for some time and he eventually became her primary coach. Griffith Joyner set a new world record in the Olympic trials for the 100m (10.49). The time was so fast that it was assumed that an error had occurred. Some still refused to acknowledge the time even after the wind gauge and timing systems had been checked and no malfunctions were found.
At the Seoul Olympic Games, Flo Jo was a sensation, winning gold medals in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay. She set a record for the 200m and her 48.08 split of the 4x400m race became the fastest for America. As of July 2024, her records for the 100m and 200m still stand.
Once again attempts were made to downplay Griffith Joyner’s performances. Darrell Robinson, a former UCLA teammate claimed to have sold Griffith Joyner steroids. It was later revealed that Robinson had been paid $25,000 for his story. To explain away her physique and dominating performances, rumors of steroid use continued to float around. Yet, in just 1988, Joyner passed 11 drug tests.
Griffith Joyner retired again in 1989 to take advantage of business and other financial opportunities. She and her husband welcomed a daughter the following year. In addition to receiving many other awards, Griffith Joyner was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
She was active with various athletic organizations and programs, establishing a foundation for children. Griffith Joyner even designed the Indiana Pacers’ basketball uniform that was used for seven seasons including their hot streak in the 90s. Flo Jo planned to make a comeback at the 1996 Olympics but stopped training after a right Achilles tendon injury.
Unfortunately, Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner died unexpectedly in her sleep at the age of 38 from an epileptic seizure on September 21, 1998.
Sources
- Biography.com Editors, and Michael Charboneau. 2024. “Florence Joyner: Biography, Flo Jo, Olympic Sprinter, Runner.” Biography. Hearst Digital Media. March 6, 2024. https://www.biography.com/athletes/florence-joyner.
- Cart, Julie. 1998. “From the Archives: She Overcame an Insecure Childhood to Become an Olympic Champion and World-Record Holder.” Los Angeles Times. California Times. September 22, 1998. https://www.latimes.com/la-me-florence-griffith-joyner-flojo-19980922-story.html.
- Childs, Joy. 2012. “The Mother behind the Olympian Reveals the Spirit That Was Flo Jo.” LAWattsTimes.Com. August 10, 2012. https://lawattstimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=342%3Athe-mother-behind-the-olympian-reveals-the-spirit-that-was-flo-jo&catid=12&Itemid=110.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2024. “Florence Griffith Joyner.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. July 22, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Florence-Griffith-Joyner.
- “Florence Griffith Joyner, Track Sprinter Born.” 2023. African American Registry. November 8, 2023. https://aaregistry.org/story/florence-griffith-joyner-born/.
- Gretschel, Johanna. 2023. “There’s Only One Flo-Jo: Everything You Need to Know about the Fastest Woman of All Time.” Women’s Running. Outside. February 28, 2023. https://www.womensrunning.com/culture/people/florence-griffith-joyner-biography/.
- Jones, Maddie. 2020. “Florence Griffith Joyner: U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame.” United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum. U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. March 18, 2020. https://usopm.org/florence-griffith-joyner/.
- “The Jordan Downs Projects Are Built.” 2024. African American Registry. May 30, 2024. https://aaregistry.org/story/the-jordan-downs-projects-are-built/.
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