Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962) is a retired American track and field athlete, ranked among the all-time greats in the heptathlon as well as long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals in those two events at four different Olympic Games. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time. She served on the board of directors for USA Track & Field (U.S.A.T.F.), the national governing body of the sport.[2]
Joyner-Kersee is an active philanthropist in children's education, racial equality and women's rights.[3] She is a founder of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which encourages young people in East St. Louis to pursue athletics and academics.[3] She collaborated with Comcast to create the Internet Essentials program in 2011, which provides high-speed internet access to low-income Americans.[3][4][5]
Jackie Joyner attended college at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she starred in both track & field and in women's basketball from 1980 to 1985 and graduated with a bachelor's in history in 1986.[10] She was a starter in her forward position 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 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.[11][12][13]
She scored 1,167 points during her collegiate career, which places her 19th all time for the Bruins games.[14] 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.[14]
She was honored on February 21, 1998 as one of the 15 greatest players in UCLA women's basketball.[15] 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.[16]
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 AustralianGlynis Nunn.[18] She also placed fifth in the long jump.[19]
Joyner was 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.
Now known as Jackie Joyner-Kersee after marrying her coach Bob Kersee,[20] she entered the 1988 Summer OlympicsinSeoul, 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. The silver and bronze medalists were Sabine John and Anke Vater-Behmer, both of whom were representing East Germany. Five days later, Joyner-Kersee won her second gold medal, leaping to an Olympic record of 7.40 m (24 ft3+1⁄4in) in the long jump.[19] 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 Games she faced unfounded allegations of drug use by the men's 800m 1984 Olympic gold medalist and 1988 Olympic silver medalist Joaquim Cruz.[21] This continued the following season in 1989 when Darrell Robinson accused her husband and coach, Bobby Kersee, of distributing performance-enhancing drugs.[22] 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.[23]
Joyner-Kersee was everyone's favorite to retain both her World titles earned four years earlier in Rome. However, her challenge was dramatically halted when, having won the long jump easily with a 7.32 m (24 ft1⁄4in) jump no one would beat, she slipped on the take-off board and careened headfirst into the pit, avoiding serious injury. She did, however, strain a hamstring, which led to her having to pull out of the heptathlon during the 200 m at the end of the first day.
In the 1992 Summer OlympicsinBarcelona, 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.[19]
At the Olympic Trials, Joyner-Kersee sustained an injury to her right hamstring. When the 1996 Summer OlympicsinAtlanta began, Joyner-Kersee was not fully recovered by the time the heptathlon started. After running the first event, the 100 m hurdles, the pain was unbearable and she withdrew.[8][24] She was able to recover well enough to compete in the long jump and qualify for the final, but was in sixth place in the final with one jump remaining. Her final jump of 7.00 m (22 ft11+1⁄2in) was long enough for her to win the bronze medal.[19] The Atlanta Olympics was the last Olympics of Joyner-Kersee's long competitive career.
In 1996 Joyner-Kersee signed on to play pro basketball for the Richmond Rage of the fledgling American Basketball League. Although she was very popular with the fans, she was less successful on the court. She appeared in only 17 games, and scored no more than 15 points in any game.[8]
Two years after retiring, Joyner-Kersee tried to qualify for the long jump event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She placed sixth at 21–10 ¾.[8][25]
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[32]
Since 1981, the Jesse Owens Award is given by USATF (and before its renaming, TAC) 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.
To date, Joyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon along with the top six all-time best results whilst her long jump record of 7.49 m is second on the long jump all-time list. In addition to heptathlon and long jump, she was a world class athlete in 100 m hurdles and 200 meters being as of June 2006[update] in top 60 all time in those events.
Sports Illustrated voted her the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.
Joyner-Kersee has consistently maintained that she has competed throughout her career without performance-enhancing drugs.[34][35]
In 2000, Joyner-Kersee played herself in an episode of The Jersey called "Legacy"[36] 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.[37] She and other female athletes had one on one discussions about accomplishments in women's sports.
In 1988, Joyner-Kersee established the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which provides youth, adults, and families with athletic, academic lessons and the resources to improve their quality of life with special attention directed to East St. Louis, Illinois. In 2007, Jackie Joyner-Kersee along with Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Warrick Dunn, Mia Hamm, Jeff Gordon, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning, and Cal Ripken Jr. founded 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.[38]
