Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, born on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, is recognized as one of the greatest female athletes in history. Growing up in a challenging environment filled with violence and substance abuse, she distinguished herself academically and athletically from a young age. Joyner-Kersee excelled in multiple sports, including basketball and track and field, earning a scholarship to UCLA, where she became an exceptional heptathlete under coach Bob Kersee.
Her athletic career was marked by numerous accomplishments, including winning three gold medals, one silver, and two bronze medals across four Olympic Games. Despite grappling with health issues like asthma and persistent hamstring injuries, she set world records in both the heptathlon and long jump, showcasing her extraordinary talent and resilience. After retiring from athletics, Joyner-Kersee founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation to support at-risk youth and became a prominent advocate for gender equity in sports.
Her legacy is further cemented by her induction into multiple halls of fame and her recognition as Sports Illustrated's best female athlete of the twentieth century, demonstrating her impact both on and off the track.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Athlete
- Born: March 3, 1962
- Birthplace: East St. Louis, Illinois
Track-and-field athlete
Joyner-Kersee was one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze medals over four consecutive Olympic Games, competing in the long jump and heptathlon. She set world and Olympic records in both events.
Areas of achievement: Sports: basketball; Sports: Olympics; Sports: track and field
Early Life
Jackie Joyner-Kersee was born March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, one of four children born to Al and Mary Joyner. She was named after First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The Joyner children grew up in a dangerous neighborhood, witnessing murder and violence on the streets. Although she was surrounded by drugs and alcohol in her neighborhood, Joyner-Kersee stayed away from that path and excelled in the classroom. She began to show her promise as an athlete by long-jumping more than seventeen feet when she was only twelve years old. Joyner-Kersee also excelled in basketball, cross country, volleyball, and track and field at Lincoln High School in East St. Louis. Her performance on the basketball court drew the attention of college recruiters, especially when her team beat opponents by an average of more than fifty points per game in her senior year. Joyner-Kersee received a basketball scholarship to attend the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
At UCLA, Joyner-Kersee started at forward on the basketball team all four years. She also met track and field coach Bob Kersee, who would have a major impact on her life. When Joyner-Kersee was an eighteen-year-old freshman, her mother died of a rare form of meningitis. Although she was devastated, Joyner-Kersee returned to school and went on to earn a history degree and graduate in the top 10 percent of her class. In 1985, she was named the UCLA Athlete of the Year and won the Broderick Cup, awarded to the country’s most outstanding female collegiate athlete.
Life’s Work
Under Kersee’s direction at UCLA, Joyner-Kersee came to specialize in the heptathlon. The heptathlon consists of seven track-and-field events conducted over two days. Day one consists of the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200-meter dash. Day two comprises the long jump, javelin, and 800-meter run. Joyner-Kersee won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) heptathlon two years in a row (1982 and 1983), as well as the 1982 US Outdoor Championship. As Joyner-Kersee prepared to compete in the 1983 World Track and Field Championships in Helsinki, Finland, she pulled a hamstring and was forced to withdraw. The hamstring bothered her throughout her career. She also received a diagnosis of asthma, for which she required medication.
In the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Joyner-Kersee had the lead in the heptathlon going into the final event. However, her hamstring injury slowed her down, and her 800-meter time was less than a second too slow to win. Glynis Nunn of Australia won the gold by a margin of five points. Joyner-Kersee’s brother, Al Joyner Jr., also competed in the 1984 Olympics, winning a gold medal in the triple jump.
After graduating from UCLA, Joyner-Kersee married Kersee, who continued to coach her. She developed into one of the top heptathletes in the world, winning the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow and setting a world record with 7,148 points. That year, she won the Jesse Owens Award, given to the top performer in track and field. She won the award again in 1987 and tied the world record of twenty-four feet, five inches in the long jump. However, she also had her first major asthma attack. Her aversion to using medication allowed her asthma to worsen over the years, even forcing her to compete while wearing an allergen-filtering mask in 1993.
The 1988 Olympic Games were held in Seoul, South Korea, and Joyner-Kersee was in the prime of her career. She won gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump, and she matched the US record for 100-meter hurdles. After reinjuring her hamstring at Tokyo’s 1991 World Championships, Joyner-Kersee managed to repeat as gold medalist in the heptathlon and won a bronze medal in the long jump at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.
At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, Joyner-Kersee was forced to withdraw from the heptathlon because of her nagging hamstring injury, but she still won the bronze in the long jump. After the Games, Joyner-Kersee tried to return to her basketball roots, joining the Richmond Rage of the newly formed all-female American Basketball League (ABL). However, she played in only seventeen games, and the ABL was quickly eclipsed by the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).
The 1998 Goodwill Games, held in New York City, marked the end of Joyner-Kersee’s professional athletic career. She turned in an outstanding performance in the 800 meters, the final event of the grueling heptathlon, and won the competition. Her 7,291 points set a world record, breaking her own record set in 1986. She attempted a comeback in the long jump for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, but was unable to qualify for the US team.
After retiring from competition, Joyner-Kersee founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation to help at-risk and low-income youth pursue sports and became its chief executive officer. She was also one of the founders in 2007 of the Athletes for Hope organization, which aims to promote community engagement, charity work, and other positive efforts among athletes. In 2012 she became a board member of USA Track & Field (USATF), the governing body for track and field in the United States. USATF also renamed its top award for female athletes after Joyner-Kersee. In addition to partnering with major corporations to create after-school programs and increase internet access to low-income households, Joyner-Kersee also joined the lecture circuit and has advocated gender pay equity in sports, women's participation in sports, and athletes' political protest.
Joyner-Kersee was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America Alumni Hall of Fame, and the USATF Hall of Fame. She was also honored with the NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award in 2019.
Significance
Joyner-Kersee was one of the best all-around athletes of all time and named the best female athlete of the twentieth century by Sports Illustrated. She ended her career having won twenty-five of the thirty-six multi-event competitions she entered. She overcame personal adversity, including her mother’s sudden death and her own health problems, to become a symbol of strength, courage, and perseverance. Joyner-Kersee won three gold, one silver, and two bronze medals over four Olympic Games. She set world and Olympic records in the heptathlon and long jump. After her career ended Joyner-Kersee continued to contribute to the sport by supporting the development of female athletes and young athletes, particularly in her hometown of East St. Louis.
Bibliography
Buren, Jodi, and Donna Lopiano. Superwomen: One Hundred Women, One Hundred Sports. Bulfinch, 2004.
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Harrington, Geri. Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Chelsea House, 1997.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Chicago Sports & Entertainment Partners, chicagosep.com/athletes/#70. Accessed 16 July 2021.
"Jackie Joyner-Kersee." USA Track & Field. USATF, www.usatf.org/athlete-bios/jackie-joyner-kersee. Accessed 16 July 2021.
Joyner-Kersee, Jackie, and Sonja Steptoe. A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Female Athlete. Warner, 1997.
Lapchick, Richard, et al. “Jackie Joyner-Kersee.” One Hundred Trailblazers: Great Women Athletes Who Opened Doors for Future Generations. Fitness Information Technology, 2009.
Yang, Avery. “Black History Month: Jackie Joyner-Kersee Is among the Greatest Athletes of All-Time.” Sports Illustrated, 21 Feb. 2020, www.si.com/olympics/2020/02/21/black-history-month-jackie-joyner-kersee. Accessed 16 July 2021.