# Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is an American former track and field athlete who competed in both the heptathlon and long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals at four different Olympic Games. Joyner-Kersee was also a four-time gold medalist (twice each in heptathlon and long jump) at the world championships. Since 1988, she has held the world record for heptathlon.

## Early life

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.

### UCLA

Joyner attended college at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1980 to 1985 where she starred in both track & field and basketball.
In basketball, she was a starter at forward 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 scored 1,167 points during her collegiate career, which places her 19th all time for the Bruins games. 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.
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.
In track, Joyner 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 graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 1986.

### UCLA statistics

Source
| Year | Team | GP | Points | FG% | FT% | RPG | APG | SPG | BPG | PPG |
| 1984–85 | UCLA | 29 | 368 | 46.5% | 45.9% | 9.1 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 0.1 | 12.7 |
| 1982–83 | UCLA | 28 | 246 | 41.4% | 65.7% | 5.6 | 1.8 | 1.0 | 0.2 | 8.8 |
| 1981–82 | UCLA | 30 | 239 | 38.1% | 67.7% | 5.8 | 2.3 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 8.0 |
| 1980–81 | UCLA | 34 | 314 | 50.6% | 63.3% | 4.6 | 2.3 | 1.2 | 0.0 | 9.2 |
| Career Basketball | UCLA | 121 | 1167 | 44.4% | 58.5% | 6.2 | 2.0 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 9.6 |

## Competition
### 1984 Summer Olympics

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 athlete Glynis Nunn. She also placed fifth in the long jump.

### 1986 Goodwill Games

Joyner became 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.

### 1988 Summer Olympics

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. Five days later, Joyner-Kersee won her second gold medal, leaping to an Olympic record of 7.40 m (24 ft 3+1⁄4 in) 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.
At the 1988 Games she faced allegations of drug use from Brazilian runner Joaquim Cruz. This continued the following season in 1989 when Darrell Robinson accused Joyner-Kersee's husband and coach, Bobby Kersee, of distributing performance-enhancing drugs. 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 has consistently maintained that she competed throughout her career without performance-enhancing drugs.

### 1991 World Championships

During the long jump event at the 1991 World Championships, having already won with a 7.32 m (24 ft 1⁄4 in) jump, Joyner-Kersee slipped on the take-off board and careened headfirst into the pit. She strained a hamstring and subsequently pulled out of the heptathlon during the 200 m at the end of the first day.

### 1992 Summer Olympics

In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Joyner-Kersee earned her second Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon. She also won the bronze medal in the long jump which was won by her friend Heike Drechsler of Germany.

### 1996 Summer Olympics

At the Olympic Trials, Joyner-Kersee sustained an injury to her right hamstring. When the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta began, Joyner-Kersee was not fully recovered by the time the heptathlon started. After running the first event, the 100 m hurdles, she withdrew due to pain. She was able to recover to compete in the long jump; her final jump of 7.00 m (22 ft 11+1⁄2 in) was vaulted into the bronze medal position. The TV never showed a replay of Joyner-Kersee's final long jump attempt neither of the last step, raising serious doubts about its validity, particularly by runner-up Niki Xanthou.

### Professional basketball career

In 1996 Joyner-Kersee signed to play pro basketball for the Richmond Rage of the fledgling American Basketball League. She appeared in 17 games, with a high of 15 points scored.

### 1998 Goodwill Games

Returning to track, Joyner-Kersee won the heptathlon at the 1998 Goodwill Games, scoring 6,502 points.

### 2000 Olympic trials

Two years after retiring, Joyner-Kersee tried to qualify for the long jump event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She placed sixth in the trials at 21–10 ¾, and did not make the Olympic team.

## Post-athletic career

Joyner-Kersee is a 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. She collaborated with Comcast to create the Internet Essentials program in 2011, which provides high-speed internet access to low-income Americans.
In 2007, Joyner-Kersee was one of the co-founders of Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization that helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and inspires millions of non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.
She served on the board of directors for USA Track & Field the national governing body of the sport.

## Awards and honors

* 1983 Broderick Award (now Honda Sports Award)
* 1985 Broderick Award (now Honda Sports Award)
* 1986 James E. Sullivan Award
* 1986 Jesse Owens Award
* 1987 Jesse Owens Award
* 1988 Missouri Athletic Club Jack Buck Awards: Sports Personality of the Year Award and Carl O. Bauer Award
* 1992 George Thomas "Mickey" Leland Award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
* World Athletics Awards
       World Athlete of the Year (Women): 1994
* 1997 Jack Kelly Fair Play Award
* 2000 St. Louis Walk of Fame inductee
* 2005 was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in the area of Sports
* 2010 NCAA Silver Anniversary Awards honoree
* 2011 Dick Enberg Award, College Sports Information Director of America (CoSIDA)
* 2021 Webster University Doctor of Humane Letters
Since 1981, the Jesse Owens Award has been given by USATF (and before its renaming, TAC) to the United States' track and field athlete of the year. In 1996, the award was split to be given to the top athlete of each gender. In 2013, the female award was renamed the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award. In March 2023, she was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame.

## Current world records

Joyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon along with the top six all-time best results. Her long jump record of 7.49 m is second on the long jump all-time list.

## Personal bests

Performances table during the world record in 1988 :
| Event | Performance | Wind | Points | Notes |
| 100 metres hurdles | 12.69 s | +0.5 m/s | 1172 | |
| Long jump | 7.27 m | +0.7 m/s | 1264 | Heptathlon Best; highest score for a single event |
| High jump | 1.86 m | | 1054 | |
| 200 m | 22.56 s | +1.6 m/s | 1123 | |
| Shot put | 15.80 m | | 915 | |
| Javelin throw | 45.66 m | | 776 | |
| 800 m | 2 min 8.51 s | | 987 | PB |
| Total | | | 7291 | WR |

### Personal bests

* 100 metres hurdles : 12.61 s
* Long jump : 7.49 m (still currently #2 all time, 3 cm behind the world record and she did it twice)
* High jump : 1.93 m
* 200 m : 22.30 s
* Shot put : 16.84 m
* Javelin throw : 50.12 m
* 800 m : 2 min 8.51 s

## TV appearances

In 2000, Joyner-Kersee played herself in an episode of The Jersey called "Legacy" where Nick Lighter (played by Michael Galeota) uses a magical jersey by jumping into her body as he is coached by her husband (Bob Kersee as himself) on how to put the shot for a track and field competition.
In 2023, Joyner-Kersee appeared on the PBS program Groundbreakers, hosted by Billie Jean King. She and other female athletes had one-on-one discussions about accomplishments in women's sports.

## Personal life

Jackie's brother is Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner, who was married to Olympic track champion Florence Griffith Joyner. Jackie married her track coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986.
Joyner-Kersee suffered from severe asthma throughout her athletic career.