Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics - Women's 100 metres

The Women's 100m at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea had an entrylist of 64 competitors, with eight qualifying heats (64), four second-round races (32) and two semi-finals (16), before the final (8) took off on Sunday September 25, 1988.

Florence Griffith-Joyner had been a mystery in 1988. She had barely competed before the Olympic Trials, only running her personal best 10.89 into the wind in San Diego. Then at the trials she shocked the world by taking more than a quarter of a second out of Evelyn Ashford's world record and backing it up with three other races that were significantly faster than any other woman had ever run. Her next races were at the Olympics and her ability was no longer a mystery. In the first round, her time was 10.88, a hundredth faster than she had run in San Diego, but it was the Olympic record, almost a tenth of a second faster than Ashford had run winning the gold four years earlier. In the quarter finals, Heike Drechsler beat Ashford's previous record in the first race, Ashford then equalled FloJo's record in the second, to share the Olympic record for about five minutes. Griffith-Joyner's quarterfinal 10.62 was the third fastest legal race in history and the fourth fastest under any conditions, behind only her own marks set in Indianapolis two months earlier at the Trials. In the semi finals, she matched her Indianapolis semi final time win a ho hum 10.70 that was still .06 faster than any other woman had ever run. Ashford and Drechsler were both under 11 seconds and Anelia Nuneva ran 11 seconds exactly to put them in the center of the track.

Previously known as a 200 metre runner without a spectacular start, Griffith-Joyner had been working to improve her start and just like in Indianapolis, she had the lead by the second time she put her foot on the ground. The surprise was that she did not break away from the pack. Nuneva, who had run her personal best of 10.85 just three weeks earlier, was giving serious chase. But 70 metres into the race her hamstring popped and she was painfully unable to move it, but she was still running at full speed, so she struggled to maintain her balance. Meanwhile Griffith-Joyner had clearly separated from the field, crossing the finish almost three tenths of a second ahead of Ashford who just edged Drechsler.

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