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What: “Intimate Portrait: Florence Griffith Joyner�

Where: Lifetime, tonight, 7-8

Lifetime television kicks off “Black History Month� with a special on Florence Griffith Joyner, who, 10 years after winning three gold medals in the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, died at 38.

The profile traces Griffith Joyner from her youth in South Central Los Angeles through her days as a track star at Jordan High, her college years at Cal State Northridge and UCLA, her heroics in Seoul, and her death Sept. 21, 1998.

Phylicia Rashad is the narrator, Joseph Feury the executive producer and Lee Grant the director. The host of the “Intimate Portrait� series is Meredith Vieira.

Griffith Joyner’s husband, Al Joyner, is interviewed at length. This is as much a love story about a devoted wife and mother as it is a story of an incredible athlete. Teammates Jeanette Bolden and Sandra Farmer Patrick, her high school coach, Penny Dezen, and her longtime coach, Bob Kersee, also are among those interviewed.

One of Griffith Joyner’s final projects was helping author John Hanc write “Running for Dummies.�

“One of Flo’s most important legacies will be that she was the first woman who was able to be beautiful and powerful at the same time,� Hanc says.

The profile deals with the rumors of performance-enhancing drugs that haunted FloJo in Seoul and until her death. A month after her death, doctors found the cause was a congenital abnormality in a blood vessel that causes a seizure. She suffocated in her sleep.

The show includes a clip of what Al said at the time the cause of death was released: “My wife took the final, ultimate drug test, and it was what we always said, there was nothing there.�

However, at the end of the show, Vieira says, without elaborating, that Al and FloJo’s mother are in dispute over the cause of death.