Let's see....
You may remember Ben Johnson shattering the 100 meters World Record for the first time, only after he had administered himself a crateful of steroids which were created in order to beef up herds of cattle!
Bad Ben was finally caught for cheating at the Seoul Olympic games 1988 and subsequently stripped of his records, his medals and his dignity.
Those Seoul Games that saw Johnson’s painful fall from cloud nine saw a new queen of sprint make her ascent to a pinnacle that no woman had previously even dreamed of. The grinning Florence Griffith Joyner exploded to some of the most outrageously fast times ever recorded by a woman. Especially for a woman who had been competing for a number of years already and especially in an event (100m sprint) where people don’t improve by half a second over one off season.
Here was a woman who was running as fast as Jesse Owens ran in the Berlin Games, and that too while grinning and waving her arms in pre-celebratory gestures to the adoring masses on TV! Then, just as suddenly, the woman who had been striving for so many years to reach the very top without success until this moment decided to call it a day there and then!
One would have thought that she may have wanted to enjoy her new found supreme powers, which she claimed came from "relaxing and enjoying" her running, and perhaps bask in the glory that was bound to lie ahead for her. Not at all! Instead she decides to quit the sport that very week! Numerous athletes including a famous Brazilian 800-meter runner didn’t even recognise her because of her new physique. She had completely mutated physically in an off season period of 8 months or so.
Previously a svelte, muscular runner, known for her grace and glamour she was now a bulging jumble of muscles, veins and sinews, not a pretty sight, akin to a female body builder, therefore grotesquely over developed and abnormal. Even the East German drug queens, worried about being shown up amidst tighter testing, couldn’t keep up with this new, revamped, souped up Flo-Jo as she was now to be known.
Then, there were the interviews after the races where she could barely raise her octaves enough and ended up sounding like a male version of Lauren Bacall. Clearly, something strange happened overnight to our beloved Flo Jo, and though I agree it is not "nice" to insinuate, especially as the person in question is now dead. You of course all know about how Flo Jo died... seizures apparently. The kind that many people who take certain types of things for whatever reason might be prone to if you know what i mean.
After all that nastiness however I have to thank Flo Jo, for providing years and years of grace and beauty to the sport, not to mention a very fine sprinting talent. But alas, we also have to thank her for damaging our beloved sport of Track and Field in the sense that the records she has set are totally ridiculous and were clearly tainted.
Florence never ran anything like that rapidly ever before despite seasons and seasons as an internationally renowned sprinter. Only in her very last season in the sport did she suddenly turn into not only an overnight world-champion but also someone who demolished the sports record books while sort of posing and running at the same time. Because of her, it is quite possible that I may now never see another women’s 200-meter world record as long as I live. That may also be true for the 100-meter record.
