Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Women's 4 × 400 metres relay

These are the official results of the Women's 4 × 400 m Relay event at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. There were a total number of sixteen nations competing.

On paper this looked like the Soviet Union would dominate. They had the gold and bronze medalists from the 400 metres race and the silver medalist from the 400 hurdles. With the retirement of Marita Koch and , Gold medalist Olga Bryzgina had the fastest time of any active athlete when she finished a close second behind Koch's world record three years earlier. Her 48.64 earlier in the week showed she hadn't lost a step. The Soviet's fourth runner had a bronze medal from the 1983 world championships.

USA was the defending champion from the boycott impaired games at home four years earlier. USA had the fourth through sixth places in the 400 meters race earlier in the week. Instead of running the fourth best runner from the Olympic Trials, USA pulled a risky maneuver in asking Florence Griffith-Joyner to anchor vs Bryzgina. FloJo hadn't run a 400 metres in years and it never was her specialty event. But FloJo was now a different beast. In one year she had risen from a 200 metres silver medal in the previous Olympics and World Championships, to super-human. Over the course of sporadic races in 1988 she had set the world record in the 100 metres and 200 metres, both by Beamonesque margins with the 200 metres world record set only two days earlier. And just earlier in the day she had anchored the US 4x100 metres relay team to the gold medal, her third already in this Olympics.

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