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Women of Wide World: Florence Griffith-Joyner
ABC Sports Online
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Florence Griffith-Joyner was a media sensation. She was fast and glamorous.
|  | | Florence Griffith Joyner still holds the world record in the 100- and 200-meters. |
The track star, affectionately known as FloJo, was renowned for her painted fingernails, eye-catching clothes and sprinting speed. One of 11 children raised in a tough Watts neighborhood in south central Los Angeles, Griffith-Joyner won a silver medal in the 200-meters at the 1984 Olympics in her hometown.
FloJo went into semi-retirement soon after the Games. She returned in 1987 with a second-place finish at the World Championships in Rome.
Yet it was on Wide World of Sports that FloJo proved she would be the star at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. At the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Indianapolis, FloJo shattered the world record in the 100-meters by an astonishing .27 seconds. She also qualified for the 200-meters.
In Seoul, FloJo set a world record in the 200, an Olympic record in the 100, won another gold in the 4x100-meter relay and took silver in the 4x400-meter relay.
Although FloJo died in 1998 from a heart seizure, she is still infamous for her one-legged leotards, and her records in the 100 and 200 still stand today.
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