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HI!!! I'm Valerie, I'm 17, I'm a senior, and I run the 100, the 200 and the third leg of the 4x100 relay for my high school in California. I made this page for today, because one year ago today, on Monday, September 21, 1998, Florence Griffith Joyner died. She was 38. She was my hero before I knew what a hero was, and she still is. So this page is LOUD, because she was loud, in the best way!!! Today is Tuesday, September 21, 1999. Read about her, and then go outside and run somewhere. That's what she'd want. (I think.)
Let me put that in perspective for the non-track people. My best 100 is 12.09. That's good! That got me to our section finals! And if I raced Flo-Jo, she'd be done and waving to the crowd when I was still about thirteen meters back. Eleven years later NOBODY has run faster, not even Marion Jones, who is amazing and won the 100 at the World Championships in Spain last month.
Three golds and a silver in ONE Olympics. Plus she won the Sullivan Award as the best amateur athlete in America for 1988!! She was born Delorez Florence Griffith on December 21, 1959, in Los Angeles, and she grew up in Watts, one of eleven kids. She started running when she was little, and she went to college at Cal State Northridge and then UCLA, where she trained with Bob Kersee's group. At the 1984 Olympics in her own hometown she won the silver in the 200, and everybody noticed her fingernails, which were long and painted and amazing. People said you couldn't run like that. She did. In 1987 she married Al Joyner, who won the gold in the triple jump at those same 1984 Olympics. (His sister is Jackie Joyner-Kersee, so that is the most athletic family in the HISTORY of families.) And then came 1988, which was the year she turned into Flo-Jo. At the Olympic Trials in Indianapolis she ran 10.49 in the 100. In Seoul she won everything there was to win. She retired from racing the next winter, on top. The outfits!! She designed her own running clothes, and nobody before her ever dressed like that on a track. At the Trials she wore a one-legged bodysuit, one leg covered and one leg bare, and people talked about it for weeks. Bright colors, the nails with designs on them. She showed everybody you could be completely girly and also the fastest person on Earth. When I was six that was the most important thing I had ever learned, and honestly I still think it is. After she retired she did not just disappear. In 1993 President Clinton made her co-chair of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, so she spent those years trying to get kids moving. She and Al had a daughter, Mary, in 1990.
OK, back to loud!!! Here's me. Not Flo-Jo, but I'm working on it.
Our relay last spring was Michele, Veronica, Bridget and me, and we got to the section finals and missed state by ONE place. One!!! Michele and Veronica graduated, so this year it's me, Bridget, Lauren and a freshman we haven't found yet. If you are a fast freshman reading this, call me. (Not really, I'm not allowed to put my number on here.) What I do in the fall (track's not till spring, but the season is made in the fall):
What I'm working on: my start (I stand up too fast) and the last forty meters of the 200, where I tie up. Flo-Jo's 200 was all about the curve, and she was so smooth coming off it that she looked like she was jogging. I watch my tape of Seoul over and over, mostly in slow motion. My VCR is not going to survive senior year. My goal after this year is to run in college. I don't care where, as long as they have a track and it isn't in the snow.
   since I put this up on Labor Day!! Other track people, write me!! [email protected] Last updated Tuesday, September 21, 1999 |