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On March 3, 1962, in a hospital in east St. Louis, Ill. a baby cried. A mom laughed, and tears of joy streamed down her face.
She was holding in her arms little Jacqueline Joyner who would later shock the world with her roars of greatness as the best all-around female athlete and all-time greatest heptathlete.
Jacqueline Joyner was named by her grandmother. Her grandmother named her after the first lady of President Kennedy saying: “Someday the girl will be the First Lady of something!”
She won four consecutive National Junior Pentathlon Championships. The first championship at the young age of 14, and also played volleyball in high school. She naturally excelled at basketball and accepted a basketball scholarship to UCLA. At UCLA she earned All-America honors as a four-year Bruins starter at forward.
Joyner represented the United States at the 1983 world championships in Helsinki, Finland. She 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.
Joyner 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.
Joyner-Kersee practiced and competed at a relentless pace, working to honor her mother and family and to maintain a genuine relationship with her countless supporters.
She fulfilled this promise by way of a relationship with her husband which was equal parts personal and professional. The coach in him would accept nothing less than the absolute best from the athlete in her. Their relationship was driven by a combined will to win and improve.
For Kersee, Jackie’s performance was always about milestones and records. “I’m expecting two golds and two world records,” Kersee said.
Joyner-Kersee has won three gold, one silver and one bronze Olympic medals. She holds the American record for the long jump at 23 feet nine inches. 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.
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.
Joyner-Kersee has received many awards, including the 1985 Broderick Cup as outstanding collegiate woman athlete, the James E. Sullivan Award in 1986 and the Jesse Owens Award in 1986 and ‘87. She was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1987, and became the first woman to win The Sporting News Man of the Year Award in 1988.
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The Heptathlon