We posted a host of stories casting doubt on various Jamaican sprinting records. Today the tables are turned, perhaps the first time in a public way on Florence Griffith-Joyner's incredible 1000M and 200M records. The astute athlete: Jamaica's Veronica Campbell–Brown. From the Caymanian Compass:
Female athletes feel they are at a disadvantage to their male counterparts because many of their world records are out of reach, says Veronica Campbell–Brown.
The Jamaican star defended her Olympic 200 metres title in Beijing in a personal best of 21.74 seconds, which is 0.4 seconds slower than Florence Griffith–Joyner’s 1988 record. That is a huge margin in women’s sprinting, equivalent to around three metres. Many women athlete consider Flo–Jo’s times to be ‘men’s’ records.
“Everybody wants to watch a world record,” Campbell–Brown told BBC Sport. “The men enjoy all the glamour because they’re capable of breaking world records. Women don’t have that luxury.”
That does seem right: fans and crowds crave new records: bigger, stronger, faster. More home runs, more speed, and a larger drop in the Dow Jones Average.
In Olympic track and field disciplines, the only women’s world records to have been set in the last 20 years have come in modified or recently added events.
Today’s competitors, in fact, are not even threatening the majority of records from the 1980s.
This has led many observers to suggest those records are suspicious and may have been achieved with the use of illegal, performance–enhancing drugs.
Of course the two records sitting out there are the glamorous women's 100M and 200M mark held by the equally glamorous Florence Griffith-Joyner, or Flo Jo. It's been about 20 years since Flo Jo set the record in LA (with questionable tailwind), and 10 years since she died suddenly. Those records stand, as opposed to almost all male sprint records which have fallen over the past 20 years.
Campbell–Brown said it was not for her to decide if any of the world bests were tainted by doping but acknowledged that serious doubts exist over the legitimacy of many women’s records.
Perhaps the most suspicious, and iconic, of those records is Griffith–Joyner’s 10.49 for the 100m.
The American smashed the previous mark by a staggering 0.27 seconds in the quarter–finals of the US Olympic Trials in 1988. It was also a half–second faster than she had ever run prior to that season, and it came after a three–year break from the sport.
Aged 28 at the time, she would quit athletics two months later, shortly before the introduction of out–of–competition drug testing.
Ten years later, Flo–Jo died when she suffocated in her sleep following a brain seizure. Her tragically early death fuelled the rumours of doping – rumours that have never been substantiated and have always been denied by her family and friends.
But there was another suspicious element to her remarkable 100m time, the long–held belief a faulty wind–meter failed to record a strong tailwind that would have ruled out her time.
Despite showing a helping wind of more than three metres per second for the rest of the day – a metre more per second than the legal limit – the anemometer recorded a wind of 0.0 m/s for Flo–Jo’s race.
“When I look at my personal best for 100m it’s 10.85,” said Campbell–Brown, the reigning 100m World champion.
“The world record is 10.49. For me that is very difficult to break. Rumour has it that the world record could have been wind–aided.
“The people in authority have the power to look at it. It’s been 20 years now and the closest anybody has come to it is 10.7 (the disgraced Marion Jones ran 10.65 at altitude in 1998).
“So it’s very difficult and I know a lot of people would like to see women break world records like the men do.”
VC-B is just setting us up...the islanders are on to the next gen of PEDs and the men got first dibs to see A) if they work and B) if they are undetectable...we all know the answer by now...next up are the ladies and VC-B will lead the new world record setting pack.
Posted by: sal m | 09/30/2008 at 14:43