Joyner-Kersee, Jackie

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1 Close Window Joyner-Kersee, Jackie Also known as: Jacqueline Joyner Born: 1962 Occupation: Olympic medalist in track and field From: A to Z of American Women in Sports, A to Z of Women. Jackie Joyner-Kersee dominated the heptathlon, the most grueling of all athletic events for women, in two straight Olympic games, and she won a total of six Olympic medals in her glorious career. She is considered by many to be the finest woman athlete of the 20th century. If Joyner-Kersee's achievements are impressive on their own, they become downright awe-inspiring when set against the context of her childhood, spent in the impoverished and often violent inner city. Jacqueline Joyner was born on March 3, 1962, in a tiny house in East St. Louis, Illinois. The oldest of four children, she was named for Jacqueline Kennedy by her grandmother, who predicted that "someday this girl will be the first lady of something." But first, Jackie, along with her siblings Al, Angela, and Debra, had to survive life in the ghetto. For Jackie, that meant surviving in a neighborhood where death was a part of daily life. When she was 10, Jackie's dance teacher was killed. The following year, she watched a man get shot to death in front of her house. When she was 14, her grandfather murdered his wife with a shotgun. In the meantime, work in East St. Louis was slow factories were boarded up and many families were unemployed and drug use was abundant. By the time they were teenagers, many of Jackie's neighbors were hooked on crack or other substances. But amid the chaos on the streets around them, something kept the Joyner kids moving forward. To begin with, Jackie's mother, Mary Joyner, was a guiding force for all four children. (Jackie's father was a railroad switchman who worked in Springfield, Illinois, and was home only on weekends.) Mary believed that the best way out of the neighborhood for her children was through hard work and discipline. She encouraged her children not only to stay in school but to work hard and earn good grades. In addition, both Jackie and her brother Al were able to focus on sports, not only as a positive pastime, but as a possible ticket to success. When she was nine, Jackie tried out for her first track-and-field team, at the local community center. She made the squad as a middle-distance runner, but soon decided that her favorite event was the long jump. "I became a long jumper almost by accident," she said later. "The coaches were waiting for the girls to jump, and I just ran over and leapt." By the time she was 13, Jackie was leaping in state championships. The following year, she was competing in the Junior Olympics, not only in the long jump, but in the pentathlon, which consists of five events. By that time, she was in high school, and although Jackie played other sports as well she was the captain of the volleyball team and the best player on the basketball squad she was first and foremost a track star. When she was 17, Joyner won state championships in both the long jump and the /5

2 meter events. She also set a new Illinois record with a jump of 22 feet, 4¼ inches. At the end of her senior year, she had a ticket out of East St. Louis, in the form of an athletic scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). But just as she thought that she had survived the tragedies of her childhood, another one came at her full force. In January 1981, in the middle of Joyner's freshman year at UCLA, her mother contracted a rare form of meningitis and lapsed into a coma. Summoned home to East St. Louis, Jackie learned that her mother was brain dead and was breathing only with the help of a respirator. Jackie and her brother Al instructed the doctor to remove the life-support system. During the ensuing days of profound grief (one of Jackie's sisters fainted during her mother's funeral; the other suffered a seizure), Jackie remained at home to provide strength for her family. When she returned to UCLA, Jackie tried to turn her focus back to the track and to the classroom (Joyner had internalized her mother's determinations and remained a disciplined student throughout her school career), but she was coping with her own grief and diminishing inner strength. During this time she met Bob Kersee, an assistant women's track coach who had recently arrived at the UCLA campus. Like Joyner, Kersee had lost his mother when he was 18; he became her supporter and close friend. Kersee also became Joyner's coach, which was a battle in and of itself. Joyner had initially come to UCLA to play basketball as well as compete in track and field, but Kersee believed that if Joyner devoted herself full time to the track and added some skills to her longjumping and middle-distance running talents, she would be competitive in the most prestigious of track-and-field events, the heptathlon. Unlike other track-and-field events, which usually demand only a single skill, such as strength, endurance, or speed, the heptathlon is a seven-part competition that demands all three of these talents. Heptathletes compete over a two-day period, and they are awarded points based on their finishes in seven events. On the first day, they run the 100- meter hurdles, then compete in the high jump, the shot put, and the 200-meter dash. On the second and final day, the athletes compete first in the long jump, and then in the javelin throw. The final event, at the end of the second day, is the grueling 800-meter event. Some of the athletes at this point are running for glory; others are merely trying to finish without collapsing in exhaustion. Joyner initially resisted Kersee's grand idea; she loved playing basketball, and more important, she worried that spending valuable time learning and perfecting other skills, such as the high jump and javelin throw, which Joyner had never done before, would take away from precious training at her favorite event, the long jump. But Kersee prevailed, and soon Joyner was competing and winning heptathlon events on the collegiate level. In 1983 Joyner was named a member of the U.S. World Champion track team. It was a double triumph for the Joyner family: Jackie's brother Al, who had gone to Arkansas State University to specialize in the triple jump, also made the team. Both Joyners traveled to Helsinki to compete. But Jackie Joyner struggled at the championships; early in the meet she suffered a pulled hamstring, and she withdrew from the event after the first day. "The Helsinki meet was the first time I ever encountered an injury that was so bad I couldn't compete," she said later. "I had never experienced anything like that before." But Joyner would experience the same injury several months later, when she aggravated the hamstring during training. This time she was determined to finish her event; she was competing at the 1984 Olympic trials, and she had to finish first or second in order to qualify for the games. With her leg wrapped in heavy tape, Joyner not only finished the pentathlon but set a new world record of 6,520 points in the process. At the end of the 2/5

3 trials, both Joyners had made the Olympic team, Jackie in the pentathlon and Al in the triple jump. The Joyners went to Los Angeles as a living example of the triumph of hope and hard work over poverty and hard times. Al Joyner told the press that he and his sister were at the Olympics on a personal mission "to prove that there were better things to come out of East St. Louis than crime." And at the games, both Joyners made their point. Surprisingly, though, it was Al not a favorite to medal in his event who took gold back to Illinois, with top honors in the triple jump. Jackie was the pregame favorite to win the heptathlon, but her nagging hamstring injury kept her from competing well on the first day. On the second day, she was able to make up some ground; she needed a time of 2 minutes, 13 seconds, in the 800-meter race to take the gold. Bothered in part by an asthmatic condition she had battled on and off since childhood, Joyner ran the final event in 2:13:03, missing the gold by one-third of a second. She made no excuses for her performances, and she displayed her silver medal with pride. After the Olympics, Joyner returned to training with a new intensity and new determination: she was aiming for gold in Kersee and Joyner spent countless hours working together, and eventually their relationship, which for several years had been strictly professional, became a romantic one. In January 1986 they married. Several months later, Joyner-Kersee's brother Al married Florence Griffith Joyner, another athlete trained by Kersee. In July 1986, Joyner-Kersee gave what was up to that time her most dominating performance in the heptathlon; at the Goodwill Games in Moscow, she set a world record with 7,148 points shattering the old one by 200 points. It was the first world record in a multi-event competition by an American since Babe Didrikson Zaharias shattered the triathlon mark in Less than four weeks after Moscow, Joyner-Kersee somehow managed to outdo her Goodwill Games performance, logging 7,161 points in the heptathlon. Joyner-Kersee was now head and shoulders above her competition and, it seemed, virtually unbeatable on the track and off. She was given the 1986 Sullivan Award, for top amateur athlete, as well as the Jesse Owens Award. During the next summer, Joyner-Kersee continued her dominance, winning the world championships in both the pentathlon and the long jump. In addition, she was beginning to draw comparisons to historical sports figures. "Those calling her America's greatest athlete since Jim Thorpe may not be exaggerating," said the Sporting News in September At the 1988 Olympic trials Joyner-Kersee fought her way through the heptathlon despite a painful hand injury she had sustained when she tore her thumb on her spike during the long jump. And in the individual long jump event she tied a world record at the trials with at leap of 24 feet, 5½ inches. But her greatest performance came at the Olympic Games themselves, in Seoul, Korea, in September It was not her easiest victory, but it was one of her most courageous. After a solid start with a victory in the 100-meter hurdle event, Joyner-Kersee struggled with the high jump her old hamstring injury had flared up, and she scored poorly in the event. She finished the first day with a disappointing time in the 200-meter event, and returned to the Olympic village that night, 103 points behind her world-record pace. But even so, Joyner- Kersee was in first place by 181 points. On the second day, she performed splendidly in the long jump, but her javelin throw fell 11 feet short of her average distance, costing her precious points. More important, she 3/5

4 was in considerable pain while throwing the spear and was unable to muster any leg strength behind her throw. And the race that would test her legs the most the event that had cost her gold in Los Angeles four years earlier the 800-meter race, was still to come. Somehow Joyner-Kersee managed to finish the race, finishing fifth with a time of 2:08:51. It was enough for a new world record, giving Joyner-Kersee a total of 7,291 points. More important, it gave her the championship she had won the Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon and the title of the world's greatest female athlete. Joyner-Kersee also won gold in the long jump, becoming the first athlete, male or female, to win gold medals in both a multievent competition and an individual event. Following the 1988 games, Joyner-Kersee returned to the streets of East St. Louis, this time as a world champion intent on giving something back to the community. That Thanksgiving she flew 100 children from her neighborhood to New York City to see the holiday parade, and the next year started the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation in East St. Louis. But Joyner-Kersee was not finished with track and field quite yet. She continued to train in both the heptathlon and the long jump, and in 1992 she once again won the Olympic heptathlon, becoming the first woman to win back-to-back gold medals in an individual event since Wyomia Tyus. Her performance at those Barcelona games prompted another Olympic champion, 1976 decathlon gold-medalist Bruce Jenner, to label Joyner-Kersee the "greatest athlete on the planet." In 1996 Joyner-Kersee competed in her fourth and final Olympic competition. She had lost some speed and strength over the years, and this time was unable to overcome a leg injury suffered the first day of the pentathlon. She withdrew from that competition, and several days later found herself in sixth place in the long jump competition with one jump to go. The crowd in Atlanta grew silent; perhaps they realized it was the last jump Joyner-Kersee would make in Olympic competition. And then Joyner- Kersee, injured leg and all, took one final leap. She jumped 22 feet, 11¾ inches on that last attempt, good enough for a bronze Medal a triumphant ending to a legendary Olympic career. Joyner-Kersee returned to her other favorite sport, basketball, after the Atlanta games, playing for a season with the Richmond Rage of the American Basketball League (ABL). When the ABL folded the following year, she contemplated a comeback in track and field, and she began to train for the 2000 Olympic Games. But after a few jumps at the 2000 Olympic trials in Sacramento, California, Joyner-Kersee decided to call it quits, once and for all. Accompanied by her husband and coach, she left the track for the last time. After her retirement, Joyner-Kersee continued to work for her foundation, helping the children of East St. Louis reach their potential. Davis, Michael D. Black American Women in Olympic Track and Field: A Complete Illustrated Reference. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, Joyner-Kersee, Jackie, and Sonja Steptoe. A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete. New York: Warner Books, Layden, Joe. Women in Sports: The Complete Book of the World's Greatest Female Athletes. Santa Monica, Calif.: General Publishing Group, 1997, p Sugar, Bert Randolph. The Sports 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Athletes of All Time. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, /5

5 Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format): Edelson, Paula. "Joyner-Kersee, Jackie." A to Z of American Women in Sports, A to Z of Women. New York: Facts On File, Inc., American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. ItemID=WE52&iPin=AWS0076&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 6, 2014). Other Citation Formats: Modern Language Association (MLA) Format American Psychological Association (APA) Format Additional Citation Information Return to Top Record URL: ItemID=WE52&iPin=AWS0076&SingleRecord=True 5/5