Flo-Jo doubts to hold fast

Just a few weeks ago on a chilly night in Berlin, Marion Jones, the latest American sprint sensation, added another fine run to her catalogue of devastating 100 metres performances. As with all her other wins it fell short of the world record mark set by Florence Griffith-Joyner 10 years ago in Indianapolis. In Berlin, at the press conference after the race, an American journalist raised the issue of Flo-Jo's indelibility.

"You have done some great runs but you are still falling short of a record set a decade ago by Flo-Jo . . ."

Pause. "Was she doped?"

Jones ducked the question, but for the moments it hung there Delorez Florence Griffith-Joyner was still spooking the athletics world.

She died yesterday just a decade past her startling prime, at the age of 38, taken by the second heart seizure to afflict her in two years. She is survived by her records in the 100 metres and 200 metres and a welter of unanswered questions.

The poignant tragedy of her disturbingly early death will do little to still the questions which surrounded her in life. Words like heart seizure, arteriosclerosis and blood clotting are as commonly linked with steroid abuse as phrases like "rapid, unexplained improvement" and "sudden change in body shape".

It would be wrong to second-guess the dark arts of the coroner's office and it must be acknowledged that Flo-Jo never tested positive, yet it is fair to say that a large question mark will be her enduring epitaph.

Born in 1959, Flo-Jo was a child of Watts, a turbulent LA neighbourhood, and even there she developed a reputation for eccentricity, keeping a pet boa constrictor.

She began running at the age of seven and scarcely stopped till 1979 when she abandoned the track due to straitened finances. The track and field coach Bob Kersee found her working as a bank teller and urged to get financial aid and get to UCLA, where he would coach her.

In the 1984 Olympics she won a silver medal in the 200 metres and three years later married triple jumper Al Joyner.

The silver medal from 1984 didn't bring her the rewards she craved and within two years she was back in the bank, enlivening her semi-retirement with part-time work as a beautician. She resumed training in 1987, winning another silver at the World Championships in the 200.

Flo-Jo had concocted the idea of an athletics coup, however. She studied videotapes of Ben Johnson's explosive start in that 100 metres final in the same meeting and consulted extensively with Johnson. In the 1988 US Olympic trials she set a world record of 10.49 seconds for the 100 metres and won the 200 in a US record of 21.77. She went on to take three gold medals at the Olympics, adding the 400 metres relay to her two sprint baubles.

Through to 1987 her 100 metres career had been prosaic; indeed going into 1988 she hadn't ranked among the top 10 in the world in the event and was rated only seventh among the Americans.

She improved by .47 of a second in one year and when she broke the 100 metres record in the US trials in an Olympic year by .27 of a second, her advance on the record was three times greater than Ben Johnson had made on the men's record in Rome the previous year.

The accusations began almost immediately. Reporters and rival athletes had noted with some scepticism the changed shape of Flo-Jo and her rapidly improving times. As the media gathered around her after her 100 metres victory in Seoul, somebody asked how she had come to run so fast. Evelyn Ashford, beaten into second place, turned to Joyner and inquired, "Why don't you tell them Florence?".

The rumours never died and were fuelled by pointed statements by many sisters and brothers of the track. It was whispered that the athletics world had cut a deal with Flo-Jo after Seoul to retire gracefully or risk exposure. Speculation was fuel led on February 25th, 1989, when she retired just before mandatory random drug testing was introduced.

Yesterday, 10 years after those strange days in Seoul, Florence Griffith-Joyner died and Ben Johnson failed to get himself re-instated to the track. The self-styled Olympic family mourns one and excludes the other, but perhaps it might have done more to protect both from the seductions it offered.