Griffith-Joyner, Florence (Delorez Florence)
Track and field
b. Dec. 21, 1959, Los Angeles, CA
d. Sept. 21, 1998
"Flo-Jo" entered California State at Northridge in 1979 and followed the track coach, Bob Kersee, to UCLA in 1981. She won the NCAA 200-meter championship in 1982 and the 400-meter title in 1983.
At the 1984 Olympics, Griffith took a silver medal in the 200-meter run. She married Al Joyner, gold medal winner in the triple jump, in 1987 and took the hyphenated name under which she became best known.
Griffith-Joyner set a world record of 10.49 seconds in the 100-meter dash at the 1988 U. S. Olympic trials and she won the 200-meter in a U. S. record 21.77 seconds. She took three gold medals at the Olympics, in both individual sprints and in the 400-meter relay, running a world-record 21.34 seconds in the 200-meter, and she also ran on the 1,600-meter relay team that won a silver.
After being named female athlete of the year by the Associated Press and winning the Sullivan Award as the nation's outstanding amateur athlete, Griffith-Joyner retired from competition. Known for her glamorous track outfits, she began designing and modeling clothes.
In 1993, she was named co-chairperson of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in 1993. She died of suffocation while suffering an epileptic seizure in her sleep.