fast woman, slow horse

fastly & slowly, flo jo & zippy chippy

Florence Griffith-Joyner, aka “Flo Jo”---she broke the 100 meter Olympic record (10.62), running .27 seconds faster and registering at 10.49 in the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. 

On top of winning the gold for the 100, she also won the gold metals for the 200 meter as well as another gold and silver as part of two separate running teams for the 4 x 100 and 4 x 400.  With her long hair and red, white and blue fingernails, she was unmistakable on the track.  She was not interested in being a career sprinter.  Instead she wanted a family, and her interests ranged from fashion design to crafts.      

 

Florence Griffith-Joyner was born in December of 1959 and died of epilepsy in 1998. 

 

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Zippy Chippy, a thoroughbred racehorse, famous for being winless for 100 races.  Zippy Chippy’s pedigree did include many famous horses, however, as Tom Gilcoyne, retired historian at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs remarked in reference to Zippy Chippy’s astonishingly poor record, “it’s a little bit like looking at the recorded performances of all horse races through the wrong end of a telescope.” Zippy was acquired by his owner in a trade for a 1988 Ford truck.  Felix Monserrate, his owner explained owning Zippy:

 

"Say you have three children," Felix said, "One is a lawyer, doing well. The other a doctor, very, very successful. But the third one, not so smart, so he's working at McDonalds.  What do you do? Ignore him? Course not. He's the one who needs your help. That's Zippy."

 

Z. Chippy, born in April of 1991, now lives at the Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Home auxiliary farm at Cabin Creek, just outside Saratoga, NY. 

 

 

all facts stolen from wikipedia