SOURCE OF FLOJO'S SPEED MIGHT NEVER BE KNOWN

There will be a wake Friday for Florence Griffith Joyner, 10 years to
the day since she won the first of her three Olympic gold medals in
South Korea.

Even with the perspective gained from that distance, in both miles and
time, it remains difficult for anyone who closely watched her glory
days to understand the various reactions to her death Monday.

The resonance of her image and accomplishments with the U.S. public
still was surprisingly intense, as evidenced by the front-page and
network news treatment her death received. The discordant rumbling
about how her death might have been linked to past drug use was no
surprise to the relatively few people who heard all the outcries in
track and field circles about Griffith Joyner's startling improvement
in 1988.

The autopsy report on Griffith Joyner's death will not be complete for
"two to three weeks," according to a spokesman for the Orange County
coroner. A preliminary autopsy found no proximate cause for her death.

Yet all manner of "authorities," most of them thousands of miles away
in Europe, have made definitive pronouncements about the role drugs
played in killing her.

A German doping expert said he was certain drug abuse killed Griffith
Joyner. The chairman of Belgium's Olympic Committee said, "It's clear
using doping products could lead to this kind of accident."

Former British athlete Lorna Boothe, who said she once trained with
Griffith Joyner, told a London paper that a nurse at a Los Angeles
area hospital told her Griffith Joyner regularly was coming to the
hospital for a "drug cocktail." Try using that in court.

Laird Madison, an endocrinologist at Northwestern Medical School, is
among the many doctors more than skeptical about any connection
between drugs Griffith Joyner might have taken 10 years ago and her
death. The drugs most often mentioned are steroids and human growth
hormone (hGH).

"It would be hard for me to imagine anything she could have done back
then that could still have an effect on her," Madison said. "It's more
likely that she just had a heart irregularity or a neurologic seizure.

"Top young athletes can have sudden deaths. I think the argument that
hGH or steroids led to her death is untenable."

It is more than unlikely, said Madison and drug-testing experts, that
any evidence of 10-year-old drug use will show up in an autopsy. The
question of whether Griffith Joyner's achievements were enhanced by
drug use probably will be answered as it has before, with
evidence--photos, statistics, negative drug tests--that alternately
can be seen as sufficient proof or inconclusive.

The International Olympic Committee's drug chief, Prince Alexandre de
Merode of Belgium, said Wednesday that Griffith Joyner underwent
especially rigorous drug testing in Seoul, "so there should not be the
slightest suspicion." But doping controls do not detect hGH, among
other things.

"It has never been proven by anyone that Florence had ever used
anything illegal to improve her performance," said Bob Kersee, her
brother-in-law and former coach, in a news conference Tuesday.
"Nowadays you don't have to have any facts to tarnish someone in the
sports world."

Insiders long have suspected her 1988 performances, as well as those
of the five other women who set world records in 1988 that have not
been broken. The public got wind of those suspicions only when
Canada's Ben Johnson was found positive for steroid use at the 1988
Olympics, costing him the gold medal in the 100 meters.

Thus began what USA Track & Field Executive Director Craig Masback has
called "the age of cynicism." All great performances in track and
field now are viewed with an eye so jaundiced that it sees athletes in
their 20s who get braces as trying to correct jaw problems allegedly
caused by hGH.

Griffith Joyner's startling improvement from 1987 to 1988 provoked
more than skepticism. An angry Kersee said such doubts owed to
outdated, preconceived notions about the potential of women athletes
like Griffith Joyner who "started to go out there and push the
envelope in training."

Griffith Joyner fed the doubts by retiring less than five months after
the Olympics. Why would a 29-year-old athlete who could have made
$50,000 for every 11 seconds of running she did in the next few years
leave at the height of her career?

The answer seemed to be avoiding a fate like that of Johnson, who
would testify before a Canadian drug inquiry that he had beaten drug
tests for seven years before being busted. The Johnson case led to a
dramatic increase in drug testing, but it showed that passing a drug
test is not conclusive proof of righteousness.

Some columnists have suggested, with the best of intentions, that
Griffith Joyner's husband, Al Joyner, could do a service to future
generations by revealing whether his wife took drugs. That suggestion
implies the link between such drug taking and Griffith Joyner's death.
It also assumes that athletes would be discouraged from taking drugs
if they knew an Olympic icon had died from such usage.

That assumption has proved to be as foolhardy as athletes who will
take any risk for better performance. Cyclists have known for years
that several Dutch athletes likely died from using
erthropoietin.

The problem is not entirely the athletes' lack of ethics or moral
fiber or common sense. It owes greatly to the demands that sponsors,
sports officials and the media put on them--more and tougher
competitions, more pressure for record-breaking performances.

It owes to a culture in which drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin are
prescribed and used as cavalierly as aspirin. It owes to an
environment in which slugger Mark McGwire uses a non-prescription
strength builder sold in nutrition stores, even though little research
has been done on the potential harmful side effects.

Hamlet asked how his stepfather could smile and smile and be a
villain. One is left to wonder how drug-taking athletes can deny
it--as many have--and then look themselves in the mirror. Some justify
it by saying everyone else was doing it, or that they didn't know what
doctors were giving them, or they were doing it under controlled
medical supervision.

At best, that is moral equivocation; at worst, poisoning both their
sport and themselves. There is no evidence that Florence Griffith
Joyner did either but, sadly, no conclusive evidence that she didn't.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry