Before her world records, Flo-Jo was working as a bank teller
Florence Griffith Joyner, the sprinter who set world records in both the 100 and 200 metres in 1988, twice stepped away from the track to work at a bank. The second time, after an Olympic silver, she spent her spare hours styling hair and nails before returning to become one of the most famous athletes of the decade.
She was born Florence Delorez Griffith in Los Angeles on 21 December 1959, the seventh of eleven children of an electrician and a seamstress, and grew up in the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts. In elementary school she ran weekend meets with the Sugar Ray Robinson Organization, and she won the Jesse Owens National Youth Games at 14 and again at 15. At Jordan High School she talked her teammates into wearing tights with their uniforms, an early sign of the flair that later made her a style icon, and she left in 1978 with school records in sprinting and the long jump.
At California State University, Northridge, she trained under Bob Kersee on a team that won the national title in her first year, but she had to drop out to support her family and took the bank job. Kersee secured financial aid, and in 1980 she followed him to UCLA, graduating in psychology in 1983. She reached the 100-metre final at the 1980 Olympic trials, finishing last, and missed the 200 metres by about a foot; the US boycott made those results moot anyway.
Silver in the 200 metres at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was followed by a lull: she ran only part-time, skipped the 1985 national championships and went back to banking. In 1987 she married Al Joyner, the 1984 Olympic triple jump champion, returned to racing in April and finished runner-up over that distance at the World Championships in Rome four months later.
With both Kersee and her husband coaching her, she improved steadily, then broke the 100-metre world record at the 1988 US trials and won three gold medals at the Olympics that year. In February 1989 she retired abruptly, staying in the public eye through endorsements, acting and design. She died in her sleep on 21 September 1998, aged 38, from a seizure linked to a birth defect.
Source: Florence Griffith Joyner
