Florence Griffith

Olympic track star Florence Griffith Joyner was eulogized Saturday as a woman of great stamina and style who astonished countless young athletes with her speed, and inspired her family with her grace and faith. "She just ran and ran and ran. She ran spectacular races," her former coach, Bob Kersee, told 1,500 mourners as he stood beneath an Olympic flag at Saddleback Community Church. "What was in her heart, every time she laced up her spikes, was Jesus. "God is her coach now.

Many remembered her as a child of the Watts projects, a little girl called Dee Dee, a dynamo who was always running, never seemed to get tired and had a fierce determination to win every race, whether it was on the schoolyard, in the streets or on a track. They remembered Florence Griffith Joyner at a candlelight vigil Tuesday night in South-Central Los Angeles, and paid tribute to a athlete who died too young.

In the 78-year history of high school sports in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the number of Olympians produced, major league players developed and Hall of Fame members inducted from a variety of sports is staggering. So now you can understand how difficult it is to be selected to the Los Angeles City Section Hall of Fame. The second class of 42 recipients has been selected, and it is a who's who of greatness. There are baseball Hall of Fame members Robin Yount (Taft 1973)

If fame is catching, then sprinter Angela Williams should eventually be one of the best. The 19-year-old Williams, one of the youngest members of the U.S. track and field team at the Pan American Games, has received advice and inspiration from three of the sport's greatest women athletes--Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Gail Devers. The first brush with the late FloJo came in 1992, when Williams was 12 and already showing signs of her natural speed.

The family of track star Florence Griffith Joyner is blaming a St. Louis hospital for her death, charging in a lawsuit that doctors failed to detect a brain abnormality two years earlier. Joyner was rushed to Washington University's Barnes-Jewish Hospital in April 1996 after suffering a seizure on a flight to St. Louis, where she was to attend a relay race. The lawsuit, filed in a Missouri court under pseudonyms, says that hospital workers improperly interpreted an MRI and other tests.

Merlene Ottey of Jamaica became the second fastest woman to run the 200 meters, winning in Zurich, Switzerland, in 21.66 seconds, .32 off Florence Griffith Joyner's world mark.