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Diane Williams (sprinter)

American sprinter (born 1960)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ441084 ↗
Source-derived summary

Diane Williams (born 14 December, 1960) is a retired World class sprinter who ran 100 m and 4 × 100 m relays. She was born 14 December 1960 in Chicago, Illinois.

In college, Williams competed for the Cal State Los Angeles Golden Eagles track and field team and the Michigan State Spartans.

1980 Olympics

Williams qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team but was unable to compete due to the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. In 2007 she did receive one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals created especially for the spurned athletes.

World Athletics Championships

Her best performances came in the first two World Athletics Championships in 1983 and 1987. In Helsinki in 1983 she was a Bronze medallist over 100 m. In 1987, she was fourth over 100 m and won gold as part of the 4 × 100 relay team, their winning time of 41.58 CBP secs is still one of the fastest in history. In 1988, she was 2nd to Florence Griffith Joyner's world record time of 10.49 in the 100 m.

Aftermath

Diane has admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during her career in the era preceding random out-of-competition testing.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Diane Williams (sprinter)” as american sprinter (born 1960). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Diane, Williams and sprinter.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1960, 1980, 2007, 1983—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1960-12-14. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Diane, Williams and sprinter providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Diane Williams (sprinter)”, the useful work is to connect “american sprinter (born 1960)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q441084. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1980, 2007 and 1983.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Diane Williams (sprinter)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.