Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Athlete

Topic: “True Heroes”

Jackie Joyner-Kersee is often regarded as the best all-around female athlete in the world and the all-time greatest heptathlete. She has won three gold, one silver and one bronze Olympic medals. At 23 feet and nine inches, she holds the American record for the long jump. With her score of 7,161, she was the first woman to earn more than 7,000 points in the heptathlon, and has held the heptathlon world record since 1986.

Jacqueline Joyner was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, on March 3, 1962. She won four consecutive National Junior Pentathlon Championships, the first at the age of 14, and also played volleyball in high school, but she excelled at basketball and accepted a basketball scholarship to UCLA. There she earned All-America honors as a four-year Bruins starter at forward.

Jackie represented the United States at the 1983 world championships in Helsinki, Finland, and later competed at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she won the silver medal in the heptathlon—a two-day contest comprising the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200-meter race on the first day, and the long jump, javelin, and 800-meter race on the second day.

Jackie married her coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986, the same year she gave up basketball for the heptathlon, setting two world records within one month. At the inaugural Goodwill Games in Moscow, she became the first woman ever to break the 7,000-point barrier.

In 1987, Joyner-Kersee competed at the indoor and outdoor track and field championships in the United States, the Pan-American Games in Indianapolis and the world championships in Rome, where she won gold medals in the long jump and heptathlon.

In 1988, she surpassed her own record, scoring 7,291 points in the Olympic heptathlon in Seoul, South Korea, winning the gold medal and setting the world, Olympic, and American records for the event. Joyner-Kersee also won the gold medal and set the Olympic record in the long jump at Seoul, with a leap of 24 feet, three inches.

In the '92 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she won the heptathlon again and took third in the long jump. She later captured the heptathlon gold medal at the 1993 world championships in Stuttgart, Germany.

A strong-willed competitor, Jackie Joyner-Kersee comes from a family of talented athletes. Her father, Alfred, was a hurdler and football player in high school, and her brother Al was also an Olympic athlete. Al's wife was Olympic sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee is often called the greatest black female athlete who ever lived, but judging from her life, she probably would be happier to have others surpass her. Strong ties to African-American social networks growing up and early encouragement in sports helped to inform within Jackie a strong pride in her race and her gender, and provided key markers for her identity and her larger goals in reducing discrimination. All of her endeavors, whether on the sports track, in the business room, on the magazine cover, or in small communities, take shape around a profound dedication to extend opportunities to young people and to eliminate the obstacles based on prejudice which she has known. Her very image, as a successful, athletic, beautiful person, has undermined destructive stereotypes of women and blacks, and her positive attitude and many projects bring material progress to these groups of people. Kersee may be the greatest female athlete to ever live, but she is more importantly a most compassionate and inspiring person, with a strong pride in who she is and a clear vision of what she wants to do for others.