June 2 at 4 am et/pt

Known as Dee Dee to her family, Delorez Florence Griffith was born December 21, 1959, and grew up in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts section of Los Angeles. She was a shy child, and other kids made fun of her because of her diction (her father insisted his 11 children enunciate correctly.) Maybe that's why she began running at age 7. Even then, one of her sister's recalled, "She was like lightning." Somehow, the Olympics were always in Joyner's future. Though she failed in her first bid for the U.S. team, her attitude was unfailingly positive. "I thought, `Wow, I missed the team by one place and I've got four years to make the next team and possibly become a medallist.' And then I became determined to do that," she said. Indeed, in the 1984 Olympics, she took the silver medal in the 200-meter dash.

Joyner then retired from track and field and went to work at a bank. She styled hair and did nails after hours. Her moonlighting, incidentally, required her to cut back her nails. But that retirement only lasted a year, and when she returned to her first love — running — she had to work to lose the extra pounds she'd put on her 5-foot, 7-inch frame (accounts vary from 15 to 60 pounds) to return to her running weight of 130.

It didn't hurt her motivation that she ended up marrying a fellow Olympian: Al Joyner, a 1984 triple jump champ, who proposed to her on one knee in a limo, en route to dinner on October 1, 1987. Nine days later, they eloped. Joyner liked to joke that the children in their future were already receiving athletic scholarship offers.

It wasn't until 1988, Joyner's second Olympic appearance, that Joyner became a true international celebrity. She won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter races and in the 400-meter relay. She took the silver in the 1,600-meter relay. All this with an injured ankle, from when her husband's baggage cart had fallen on her at the airport. Joyner's diary entry from the date read: "Husband keeps me out of the Olympics."

Still, she dazzled in each and every race, both with her performance and her outfits, which were part rock star getup and part athletic attire. There was an apple-green "one-legger" bodysuit with a white bikini bottom complemented by orange, black and white nails, and the infamous athletic negligee in the final race which consisted of a white lace bodysuit with see-through tights and midriff.

Obviously, Joyner was flashy, unapologetically so. And her bold attitude provoked critics, who sneered that she took steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, though tests never proved this.

In 1993, President Clinton picked her to become the first woman to chair the President's Council on Physical Fitness. She served as a spokesperson for many groups, including the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, American Cancer Society and Project Eco-School, an environmental education center.

On Sept. 20, 1998, Flo Jo attended a gymnastics meet in Santa Barbara, then visited her mother. She told Al she felt "a little tired" that night. The next morning at 6:30, Al Joyner could not wake his wife. He called 911, and when medics arrived at their Mission Viejo home, Florence Griffith Joyner was dead. Initial reports stated that she died of an apparent heart seizure (the athlete had suffered a seizure on a plane two years earlier.) Still, there was much speculation in the media that steroid use contributed to her death, or even that she was murdered. A month-long investigation did not support either theory-and ultimately, experts concluded that Flo Jo died of asphyxiation as a result of an epileptic seizure.