A report claims that no world records will be set after 2060. Could this be the year athletics shakes off its dodgy past?

September 1988 was Florence Griffith-Joyner’s month to leave us the memories. With her flowing stride, painted fingernails and outrageous running suits, she was the star turn at the Seoul Olympics. The gold medals she won in the 100m, 200m and sprint relay were merely confirmation of what was so wonderfully obvious in the performance. Flo-Jo, as she was affectionately known, was the fastest, most graceful woman athlete we had ever seen.

Earlier in the summer she had run an extraordinary 10.49sec for the 100m at the US Olympic trials in Indianapolis. Not so much a world record as a time that looked imperiously down on every other time in the event. Then at Seoul came a performance even more mind-boggling. In the quarter-final of the 200m, Flo-Jo cruised clear of the opposition and when qualification for the next round was assured, she decelerated. It wasn’t an abrupt slowing down but a gradual easing back on the throttle. Most favourites do the same when running heats. The difference was that her time in that quarter-final was a world record. Flo-Jo remains the world record-holder at 100m and 200m. There were suspicions that she must have taken drugs, but, at the time, little evidence that she did.