Flo Jo’s 100 meter World Record is a problem for track and field
Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce is the reigning World Champion in the 100 meter dash. Entering the 2023 championship event she is ranked inside the top 5 women in the world. Although she is a ways off from the world leader on the clock, she wasn’t the favorite to win in 2022 either, so there is no reason for anyone to bet against her. In fact, she was the Olympic champion for the first time all the way back in 2008 in the 100 meter dash, at the same time that Bolt first earned that title. The reason why Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce is not looked at as the greatest woman to ever sprint, is because she is still just one great sprinter, in a generation with a whole lot of them. Four of the top ten fastest women all time will be facing off in the 2023 World Championships. It is arguable that this sprinting field might be the greatest one ever assembled. The truth is that women’s sprinting has never seen a woman take the crown as the greatest to ever do it. The real reason for that is because all of them might as well be chasing after a ghost. The ghost of Florence Griffith Joyner. She was larger than life, before social media was there to capture it, and her success has made it hard for us to recognize the greatness of just about anyone else.
How good was Flo Jo really?
Florence Griffith Joyner (Flo Jo) is Usain Bolt before Usain Bolt ever existed in the women’s game. She is the World Record holder in the 100 meter and 200 meter dashes, with times that have stood for 30 years and counting! That means her records are literally older than most professionals now. However, what is ironic is that she only dominated at one Olympic games, winning the 100, 200, and 4x100 in 1988, the same year she would break both world records. Outside of that competition she never won another individual gold medal at the world championships or Olympics, which leads us to the controversy.
As the story goes a lot went down in the 1980s in the sport of track and field. There is a lot of “speculation” about why people ran so fast during that time period. In women’s sprinting the 100, 200, and 400 meter world records have all been standing for more than 30 years, but all of them have fallen by now on the men’s side. In fact, we’ve seen many men get close to what would have been those records dating back to the 1980s by now. It is unfair to pass judgment on Flo Jo’s track career, and she’s not around to defend herself. But giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, her entire career could be described as one amazing lightning strike. Without her 1988 Olympic season, specifically the records she broke, she would just be another woman on the list of greats, that we hardly ever talk about. You can make your own mind up on how you feel about it, but this has become a problem for women’s sprinting to overcome.
Why the 100 meter world record is a problem
Flo Jo’s success is a problem because track and field fans get blinded by fast times. Most people don’t even remember that she only won medals at 1 Olympic games. Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce has done that at four straight Olympics, winning Gold more than once, and dominating the World Championships with 6 individual gold medals. She’s technically not even the fastest Jamaican of this era. That would be Elaine Thompson-Herah who just ran 10.54 seconds in 2021. She is the only woman to get within a tenth of Flo Jo’s miracle run. Sha’carri Richardson is seventh all time, and the fastest American right now, but she is still more than two tenths of a second off of a record from 1988. That would be like celebrating Brandon Carnes for being two tenths of a second off of Carl Lewis’s world record in 1991, 30 years later. For the record, he runs unattached, and has never made Team USA individually at any international championships yet.
The ghost of Flo Jo has made it impossible for track fans to truly appreciate what the women do in today’s game. As long as that record stays on the books, it will continue to be like that. Without her, Shericka Jackson would be the world record holder in the 200 meter dash right now. Keep in mind, she is still not the only one, because there has never been an era with this many great women’s sprinters. They just haven’t beaten the ghost from 1988 yet.
This is the golden age of women’s sprinting
As great as Allyson Felix was, people don’t realize she is not even the fastest American in any event that she ran. She won a lot of medals, but right now Gabby Thomas is faster than she ever was in the 200 meter dash. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Britton Wilson are faster than she ever ran in the 400 meter dash. One just started running the event professionally in the last six months, and the other just finished her collegiate track season. Allyson perhaps gets a pass, because she’s the LeBron James of women’s sprinting. She ran faster for longer than just about anyone else, and figured out how to win as she did it. But almost nobody else has gotten that kind of love since Flo Jo. The ladies we are witnessing right now in the sprints are not only the best in the world, but the best in history. However, they likely won’t run past the ghost. Besides in track and field if you’re not first then you’re last. Apparently, that rings true for breaking world records as well. But track fans need to make an exception. Most weren’t paying attention in the 80s. The chase after the ghost of Flo Jo has made it pretty hard for us to recognize the women of this generation for what they really are. We are witnessing the greatest collection of women’s sprinters the world has ever seen.
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