In a three-hour funeral service yesterday that was at time tearful, funny and uplifting, the Olympic gold medalist known worldwide as `Flo-Jo,' was remembered as a woman of deep faith who valued her friends and family above fame and bright lights.

Many in the crowd of about 2,000 mourners at Saddleback Valley Church in Suburban Orange County sobbed in their seats, shouted encouragement to the speakers or sang along with the often boisterous choir from Joyner's Baptist Church.

``Flo-Jo is now called to run a different race,'' said Rev John Nix-McReynolds during a passionate eulogy. ``Not a race in time, but a race in eternity.'' Nix-McReynolds recalled how Griffith Joyner rose from humble beginnings as one of 11 children growing up in the housing projects of Watts to become a world-class sprinter and Olympicchampion.

Griffith Joyner, who died on Monday at her home in Orange County of what police and family members called a heart seizure, starred at the University of California, Los Angeles, and won a silver medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

But Flo-Jo earned her name as the ``world's fastest woman'' at the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea, when she became the first American woman to claim four medals in one year, winning three gold and one silver.

She also set world record times in the 100 and 200 metre races -- records which still stand a decade later -- and grabbed attention for her flashy, one-legged track outfits and long, colourfully painted fingernails.