- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Florence-Griffiths Joyner’s 34-year-old 100 metre record of 10.49 seconds is one of the longest standing in track and field and also one the most controversial.
Rumours and innuendo have always surrounded ‘Flo-Jo’ regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs mainly due to her untimely death from heart failure at the relatively young age of 38, although she never tested positive during her record-breaking career.
However, it is not the alleged drug use that shadows her world record, but more fact that it was strongly wind-assisted with some serious anomalies in the wind reading equipment on the day of the record in 1988 at the US Olympic trials.
Triple Tokyo Olympic champion Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah came agonisingly close to Flo-Jo’s record during her stellar 2021 season, running a 10.54 on the same track at last year’s Prefontaine meeting in August. Although it is early in the season and non-ideal cool temperatures are forecast, by returning to the same track that produced her personal best, could bode well for the perfect mindset for her to give the record a nudge.
Thompson-Herah will line up against a dynamite field that includes current world 200 metre champion, Briton Dina-Asher Smith, and sees the return of the controversial American Sha-Carri Richardson. The Texan-born US Collegiate record holder missed the 2021 Tokyo Olympics after testing positive to marijuana in July after winning the US trials in 10.86.
She had burst into Olympic contention by recording a personal best of 10.72 in April. Thompson-Herah’s fellow Jamaican, and great rival, Shelly-Anne Fraser Price has opted for the 200-metre event in Eugene.
The women’s 100m final is scheduled for 4:30 am WST Sunday, 29 May.
Australia’s middle-distance stars could make the most of the perfect cool conditions which are always the feature of this traditional meeting in the Pacific Northwest City.
Australian 1500 metre record holder Jessica Hull has been in career-best form at the first two Diamond League meetings with consecutive podium finishes in Doha and Birmingham.
In Birmingham, Hull chased the Olympic silver medallist Scot Laura Muir all the way to the finish line for second place. Hull and Muir will again clash in Eugene setting up a mouth-watering duel when they represent their countries back in Birmingham at July’s Commonwealth Games.
Perth’s Matt Ramsden will be stepping up in distance from the 1500 metres to his more favoured 5000m event. The Perth City to Surf record holder has been showing good form over the shorter distance in the Diamond League season so far but he is much better suited to and favours the 5000m.
He could very well be given the pace-makers role as Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei has nominated an attempt at his own world record of 12:35.36, set in 2020.
Other Australians on the bill are Olympic women’s high jump silver medalist, Nicola Olsylagers (nee McDermott) and Oliver Hoare in the mile. National 1500 metre record holder Stewart McSweyn is not competing due sustaining an injury in Doha and lasting COVID effects which threaten to derail his Commonwealth Games and World Championships campaigns.