How it unfolded
Florence Griffith-Joyner arrived in Seoul having run an unbelievable 10.49 for 100m at the US trials in Indianapolis that July. In the 200m semifinal she had already broken the 21.71 world record held by Marita Koch and Barbel Wockel, running 21.56, then lowered it again in the final hours later to 21.34. The race was effectively over as she came off the curve; Jamaica's Grace Jackson took silver in 21.72 and East Germany's Heike Drechsler bronze in 21.95. She left those Games with three golds — 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay — plus a 4x400m silver. With her long fingernails and one-legged racing suits adding to her visual presence, she was the biggest star of the Games. The following February, immediately after international out-of-competition testing was expanded, she abruptly retired at 28, and died of a seizure in 1998.
Why it still matters
Thirty-seven years on, no one has come close to either her 10.49 for 100m or her 21.34 for 200m. These two marks remain the absolute reference points of women's sprinting, and the oldest unresolved argument in athletics over how to treat records set in the era just before the testing regime was tightened.