The evolution of the women's 100m world record: When will Florence Griffith-Joyner's 10.49 fall? 

10.49. It’s a number that has stood alone for 34 years as the world’s greatest female sprinters have tried - and failed - to lower it.

Set back in 1988 in Indianapolis by American sprinter Florence “Flo-Jo” Griffith-Joyner, there is an air of mystique that hangs over 100m world record, and even a dose of controversy.

Set in the quarter-finals of the U.S. Olympic trials, Flo-Jo stormed out of the blocks in the first heat powering through the finish line to become the first - and only ever - woman to dip under 10.5 seconds.

Up until that point, the previous best had been a 10.76 run by Evelyn Ashford in Zurich four years earlier in 1984. She became the first woman ever to run sub-11 seconds at an Olympic Games.

However, Flo-Jo’s mark new mark of 10.49 has been surrounded by controversy ever since. While the wind gauge for her race read ±0.0m/s, the men’s triple jump was taking place at the same time across the track with a tailwind of +4.3m/s, while the legal limit is 2.0m/s. And while Flo-Jo's mark was ratified by the IAAF, doubt still hangs over the details of the run.

Ever since that day, the record has become a thing of legend, a folkloric standard that athletes across the world have looked at with awe.

That is until this current generation of sprinters, led by two-time and reigning Olympic 100m champion Elaine Thompson-Herah and double Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

Read on to see how we got to this point and the prospects of the world record falling at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon.

READ MORE: World Athletics Championships 2022: Day-by-day

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about these Track and Field World Championships.

The evolution of the women’s 100m world record

The first IAAF-approved women’s 100m on record belongs to Marie Mejzlíková II who came home in a time of 13.6 on 5 August 1922. Just two weeks later, that record was shattered by Britain’s Mary Lines who registered 12.8 seconds in a meet in Paris, France.

It took until 1932 for any woman to dip under 12 seconds, when the Netherlands’ Tollina Schuurman broke the barrier in the Dutch city of Haarlem.

41 years later, the 11-second mark was finally beaten when East Germany’s three-time Olympic champion Renate Stecher posted a time of 10.9 in Leipzig.

The age of automatic timing began in 1975, when records could be timed accurately in hundredths and not tenths of a second.

And by the time Ashford's record fell to Flo-Jo in 1988 the record had been lowered from 10.88 seconds to 10.76 before the current mark of 10.49 was eventually posted in 1988.

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When will Flo-Jo’s record fall?

"A few years ago I was asked whether I could break that record and I said it was not possible,” Elaine Thompson-Herah admitted in August 2021.

But much has changed in the short period of time between the Jamaican's latest Olympic victories and this year's World Athletics Championships.

On 21 August 2021, the Jamaican speedster set a time of 10.54 seconds at the Prefontaine Classic - on the exact same Hayward Field track where the World Championships competition will take place.

It places her within 0.05 seconds of Flo-Jo’s record. And the improvement in her own rapid times has seen Thompson-Herah change her views on whether she can go under 10.49.

"This year I’ll be 30 years old and to see myself as that 30-year-old sprinter breaking Flo Jo’s record would be something very spectacular,” she told the BBC in May. “That would be written all over in the history books, that cannot be erased. That would be something very important to me."

In this golden age of women’s sprinting, Thompson-Herah isn’t the only star who can contemplate the possibility of breaking the world record.

Her compatriot Shell-Ann Fraser-Pryce has been in exceptional form of late, posting a personal best of 10.60 seconds a week after Thompson-Herah’s own 10.54.

It makes her the third-fastest woman alive, and ominously for the record she has carried her form into the 2022 season.

Just last month on 18 June, Fraser-Pryce set a time of 10.67 at the Paris Diamond League in only her second competitive 100m race of the year. In her first, she posted the exact same time.

It makes her the only woman in history to have run under 10.7 before 1 July in any year. And she too is aiming for heights the world has never seen on an athletics track.

"This season I am definitely looking forward to run 10.5 and possibly 10.4 because that’s the aim," she said in April. "And I think I am on my way to that. I just have to continue to trust that goal and I’ll just continue to put in work.”

Others will surely enter the conversation, including fellow Jamaican Shericka Jackson who won the Jamaican National Championships 100m race and became the third-fastest 200m runner in history at the same trials.

It leaves us with the mouthwatering prospect of a record being broken that many said could never be bested during this week’s World Athletics Championships 100m competition.

READ MORE: The evolution of the men’s 100m world record

Schedule for the women’s 100m in Oregon

Times below are in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7 hours)

Day 2 - 16 July

Heats - 17:10

Day 3 - 17 July

Semi-finals - 17:33

Final - 19:50pm