For Speed and Style, Flo with the Go

By Ellie McGrath/Irvine

Florence Griffith Joyner has always looked sensational on the track. In the 1984 Olympic trials she glistened in shimmering bodysuits, earning the nickname "Fluorescent Flo." In the Los Angeles Games, in which she won a silver medal in the 200 meters, she flaunted 6-in. fingernails, which didn't cause any apparent wind drag. At the world championships in Rome last year, she resembled an exotic alien in her hooded bodysuit. And at this year's Olympic trials in Indianapolis, she titillated fans with the "one-legger," which covers one limb in vivid color and leaves the other muscularly bare.

But it was Griffith Joyner's performance in the 100 meters that caused the real sensation at the trials. In the blistering sun (the track heated up to 115 degrees), Griffith Joyner atomized Evelyn Ashford's 1984 world record. Track aficionados found it hard to believe that this relative novice at 100 meters could lower the mark to 10.49 sec., a time that womankind was not supposed to reach until the next century.

How had this good -- but not great -- 200-meter runner suddenly blasted the 100-meter record by a preposterous, in sprinter's terms, .27 sec.? And done it at an age, 28, when most athletes are losing half a step? Some have whispered, as they have about countless other athletes, that performance-enhancing steroids have to be a factor behind such dramatic improvement. Griffith Joyner attributes it to hard work and collaboration with her husband of almost a year, Triple Jumper Al Joyner (who narrowly missed a berth on this year's team). "I've trained a lot harder, maybe three times harder, this year," says Flo-Jo, as fans call her. Always a glutton for workouts, she often endures 1,000 sit-ups a day. Last fall she added almost daily sessions with weights, and can now squat an impressive 320 lbs. "In order to burst out of the blocks, you need a lot of leg strength," she says. "Before now I never had that great a start." As for drug use, Griffith Joyner says, "I don't think a person has to use drugs. There is no substitute for hard work."

The triumph in the 100 is all the sweeter because it is an opportunity she almost missed. "I was never allowed to concentrate on the 100," she says. "Yet I had the fastest time in America in 1985 and again last year. I was always somewhat overlooked." Her coach, Bob Kersee, had found gold for other athletes, including Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who is Kersee's wife and Al Joyner's sister (making the four of them a sort of First Family of U.S. track). "Bobby told me to go to the trials in the 200," says Flo-Jo. "But Al and I had decided I'd go to the trials in the 100 and 200." After the event, Griffith Joyner announced that instead of Kersee, her husband would henceforth be her coach.

The two train together and advise each other on and off the track. Despite the flashy outfits, Griffith Joyner is soft-spoken and demure away from competition. She pays fastidious attention to her appearance. In fact, if she has time between heats, she will change not only her outfit but also her nail polish. "I love it when she paints on little palm trees," says an adoring Al. He insists that his wife's departure from Kersee's club will not cause any awkwardness come Thanksgiving Day. Says Al: "Jackie will always be my sister, Bobby will always be my brother-in-law, and Florence will always be my wife."

From now on, Florence may also be a star. Since the trials, she has been flooded with requests for interviews and invitations to compete. She's done more talking than racing. She chose to run at only two European meets and posted respectable but unspectacular times (she claims that a head wind was at fault in one of the races). Al reports that she has turned down $200,000 in race invitations since she broke the world record. "Let others chase the fool's gold. We'll chase the real gold. It's like we have a savings account. We drew out a little in July. But this," he says, referring to Seoul, "is the house we want."

And Griffith Joyner has the explosive power to get it. In late August she was out doing a morning workout on the track at the University of California at Irvine. Al, as usual, was running some warm-ups with her. All of a sudden, Florence shot off like a Lycra bullet, leaving her husband well behind. Her 160-meter sprints were so draining that she would walk slowly and deliberately around the rest of the quarter-mile track to allow her body to recover. As the Games approach, her sights seem tightly focused. She refuses to say whether she thinks she'll do better in the 100 or the 200 in Seoul. But Flo-Jo does concede that she will run both races in a standard U.S. team uniform, not the one-legger that has become her signature.