Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is a retired American track and field athlete, ranked among the all-time greats in the heptathlon as well as long jump.

She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals in those two events at four different Olympic Games.

Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time.

She served on the board of directors for USA Track & Field (U.S.A.T.F.), the national governing body of the sport.

Joyner-Kersee is an active philanthropist in children's education, racial equality and women's rights.

She is a founder of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which encourages young people in East St. Louis to pursue athletics and academics.

Jacqueline Joyner was born March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, and was named after Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady of the United States.

As a high school athlete at East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High School, she qualified for the finals in the long jump at the 1980 Olympic Trials, finishing 8th behind another high schooler, Carol Lewis.

She was inspired to compete in multi-disciplinary track & field events after seeing a movie about Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

Didrikson, the track star, basketball player, and pro golfer, was chosen the "Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century. Fifteen years later, Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the greatest female athlete of all time, just ahead of Zaharias.

Jackie Joyner attended college at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she starred in both track & field and in women's basketball from 1980 to 1985 and graduated with a bachelor's in history in 1986.

She was a starter in her forward position for each of her first three seasons (1980–81, 81–82, and 82–83) as well as in her senior (fifth) year, 1984–1985.

She had red-shirted during the 1983–1984 academic year to concentrate on the heptathlon for the 1984 Summer Olympics.

She won the Broderick Award, (now the Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate track and field competitor in 1983 and in 1985, and was awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup, given to the nation's best female collegiate athlete in 1985.

Joyner competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and won the silver medal in the heptathlon.

She was the favorite heading into the event, but finished five points behind Australian Glynis Nunn.

She also placed fifth in the long jump.

At the Games she faced unfounded allegations of drug use by the men's 800m 1984 Olympic gold medalist and 1988 Olympic silver medalist Joaquim Cruz.

The Bruins advanced to the West Regional semi-finals of the 1985 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament before losing to eventual runner-up Georgia.

Joyner was the first woman to score over 7,000 points in a heptathlon event (during the 1986 Goodwill Games).

In 1986, she received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.

Now known as Jackie Joyner-Kersee after marrying her coach Bob Kersee, she entered the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea and earned gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump.

At the Games, she set the still-standing heptathlon world record of 7,291 points.

The silver and bronze medalists were Sabine John and Anke Vater-Behmer, both of whom were representing East Germany.

Five days later, Joyner-Kersee won her second gold medal, leaping to an Olympic record of 7.40 m in the long jump.

She was the first American woman to earn a gold medal in long jump as well as the first American woman to earn a gold medal in heptathlon.

Years later, doping insider Victor Conte asserted that in 1988 he personally witnessed an Olympic official at the Seoul games notifying Bobby Kersee that Joyner-Kersee had tested positive for PED use.

Joyner-Kersee was everyone's favorite to retain both her World titles earned four years earlier in Rome.

However, her challenge was dramatically halted when, having won the long jump easily with a 7.32 m jump no one would beat, she slipped on the take-off board and careened headfirst into the pit, avoiding serious injury.

She did, however, strain a hamstring, which led to her having to pull out of the heptathlon during the 200 m at the end of the first day.

This continued the following season in 1989 when Darrell Robinson accused her husband and coach, Bobby Kersee, of distributing performance-enhancing drugs.

In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Joyner-Kersee earned her second Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon.

She was honored on February 21, 1998 as one of the 15 greatest players in UCLA women's basketball.

In April 2001, Joyner-Kersee was voted the "Top Woman Collegiate Athlete of the Past 25 Years."

The vote was conducted among the 976 NCAA member schools.

Source

She collaborated with Comcast to create the Internet Essentials program in 2011, which provides high-speed internet access to low-income Americans.

Joyner-Kersee is one of the most famous athletes to have overcome severe asthma.

In March 2023, she was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame.

She scored 1,167 points during her collegiate career, which places her 19th all time for the Bruins games.