12 S 10th St, East St Louis, IL 62201, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee studied at East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High School.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee as a Boys & Girls Club member
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee as a child
College/University
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
Joyner-Kersee was heavily recruited by high-ranking colleges and chose the University of California, Los Angeles.
Career
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1986
Jackie Joyner-Kersee holds her trophy after being named 1986 Sportswoman of the Year by the United States Olympic Committee.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Rome, Italy
Jackie Joyner-Kersee prepares to throw during the shot put discipline of the heptathlon event at the 1987 World Championships in Rome, Italy.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Rome, Italy
Jackie Joyner-Kersee in action during the 100 metre hurdles discipline of the heptathlon event at the 1987 World Championships in Rome, Italy.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Rome, Italy
Jackie Joyner-Kersee clears the bar in the High Jump section of the Heptathlon event at the 1987 World Championships in Rome.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Viale dei Gladiatori, 00135 Rome RM, Italy
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the winner of the women's heptathlon, running in the 800m at the 2nd World Athletics Championships held at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, Italy, September 1987.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
420 University Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46202, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in the Women's Long Jump event of the Athletics competition of the 1987 Pan American Games on August 14, 1987 at Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
Bobby Kersee and Jackie Joyner-Kersee relax on the infield during the Stanford Classic track meet held in April 1987 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
San Jose, California, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee relaxing on the infield at the June 1987 TAC Meet in San Jose, California.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is ready to run at the TAC Championships.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
Jackie Joyner-Kersee clears the hurdle at the TAC Championships.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1987
625 Nelson Rd, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competing in the shot put at Stanford Stadium, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1990
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in a track and field event.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1990
Jackie Joyner-Kersee in the air while vaulting.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1990
11110 Alondra Blvd, Norwalk, CA 90650, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee long jumps during The Athletics Congress Championship meet held in June 1990 at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
1990
5000 Crown Blvd, Denver, CO 80239, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee in action at Montbello High School.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in the javelin throw of the Heptathlon at a track and field event circa 1987.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in the high jump of the Heptathlon at a track and field event circa January 1, 1987.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in the javelin throw of the Heptathlon at a track and field event circa 1987.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Los Angeles, California, United States
Low-angle portrait of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, dressed in yellow shorts and tank top as she poses on a track field, Los Angeles, California, 1990s.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
LaVonna Martin clears the hurdle just ahead of Jackie Joyner-Kersee to win the women's 55-meter hurdles with a time of 7.45 seconds. Joyner-Kersee finished second at 7.51.
Gallery of Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee rests for a moment at a Pepsi Track event.
Achievements
1986
Jackie Joyner-Kersee holds her trophy after being named 1986 Sportswoman of the Year by the United States Olympic Committee.
Membership
Awards
Olympic Games Silver medal
1984
Olympic Games Silver medal
James E. Sullivan Award
1986
James E. Sullivan Award
Olympic Games Gold medal
1992
Barcelona, Spain
Jackie Joyner-Kersee received her second gold medal for heptathlon during the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the winner of the women's heptathlon, running in the 800m at the 2nd World Athletics Championships held at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, Italy, September 1987.
420 University Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46202, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competes in the Women's Long Jump event of the Athletics competition of the 1987 Pan American Games on August 14, 1987 at Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Bobby Kersee and Jackie Joyner-Kersee relax on the infield during the Stanford Classic track meet held in April 1987 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee attends the 11th Annual Women's Sports Foundation Awards Dinner on October 15, 1990 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee attends Gold Meets Golden: the 5th Anniversary Refreshed by Coca-Cola, Globes Weekend Gets Sporty with Nicole Kidman and Athletic Royalty on January 6, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.
9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States
Jackie Joyner-Kersee of Xavier Riddle and The Secret Museum speaks during the PBS segment of the Summer 2019 Television Critics Association Press Tour 2019 at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 29, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.
LaVonna Martin clears the hurdle just ahead of Jackie Joyner-Kersee to win the women's 55-meter hurdles with a time of 7.45 seconds. Joyner-Kersee finished second at 7.51.
A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete
(Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the world's most successfu...)
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the world's most successful athletes. She has dominated the women's decathlon for many years. With this book, Jackie discusses how she has overcome her difficult early years to rise to the top.
(Running For Dummies is for everyone with a desire to run....)
Running For Dummies is for everyone with a desire to run. If you're a reforming couch potato, it helps ease you into a healthier lifestyle. If you have Olympic aspirations, take a look at different ways to improve your training.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is an American athlete, considered by many to be the greatest female athlete ever. She was the first participant to score more than 7,000 points in the heptathlon.
Background
Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee was born on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, United States. She is the second of four children in her family. Her parents, Alfred Joyner, a construction worker and railroad switch operator, and Mary Joyner, a nurse's aide, were teenagers when Jackie was born.
Education
Joyner-Kersee grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, a poverty-stricken city on the Mississippi River. Her parents, Alfred and Mary Joyner, were barely in their teens when they got married. Mary was only 14 when her first child, Al, was born and just 16 when she gave birth to Jackie in 1962. Both parents worked hard to provide for their growing family. The couple's salaries were hardly adequate, and the Joyners knew real desperation.
The Joyner family - especially Jackie - wished desperately for better circumstances. Jackie's mother encouraged - and even bullied - her to improve herself. Having been a teenaged parent herself, Mary Joyner told the children they could not date until eighteen and spurred their interest in other activities. As a child, Jackie began to study modern dance at the local Mary Brown Community Center. One day she saw a sign advertising the center's new track program. She decided to give it a try.
At first, Joyner-Kersee lost every race, but soon she was winning. The first competitor she beat regularly was her older brother, Al. The two siblings began to spur one another on to greater and greater achievements, growing very close in the process.
At the age of 14, Joyner-Kersee won the first of four straight national junior pentathlon championships. Track and field events were only part of the weapons in her arsenal, however. In East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High School, she was a state champion in both track and basketball. Her Lincoln High School basketball team won games by an average of 52.8 points during her senior year. Joyner-Kersee also played volleyball and continued to encourage her brother in his sporting career. Her athletic achievements notwithstanding, she was an excellent student who finished in the top ten percent of her graduating class.
Joyner-Kersee was heavily recruited by high-ranking colleges and chose the University of California, Los Angeles. She began studying there in 1980 on a basketball scholarship.
While at UCLA, Jackie became a starting forward for the Bruins and worked with the track team as a long jumper. She was rather surprised to find herself singled out by an intimidating assistant track coach named Bob Kersee, who detected untapped possibilities in the young collegian. Kersee literally put his own job on the line, demanding to coach Jackie Joyner in multi-events, or he would quit. The university athletic department agreed to his plan.
Joyner-Kersee was already a powerhouse in the long jump and the 200-meter sprint. She was also a top-scoring forward on the basketball team, so her endurance was excellent. Al Joyner taught her how to run the hurdles and to throw the javelin - a type of spear - and the shot put - a heavy palm-sized metal ball.
By 1983, Joyner-Kersee qualified for the world track and field championships in Helsinki, Finland. Her first chance to be a world champion ended in disaster, however, when she pulled a hamstring muscle and could not complete the heptathlon. Ironically, her brother Al was also present, and he too was injured.
Joyner-Kersee's rise to international prominence in athletics accelerated in 1984 when she won an Olympic silver medal in the heptathlon. Joyner-Kersee established a world record in the long jump in 1985, with a jump of 23 ft 9 in (7 m). In 1986, she set a new world record in the heptathlon at the Goodwill Games in Moscow, accumulating a total of 7,148 points; each event has its own point-scoring scheme that is totaled in a complex calculation.
Joyner-Kersee's return to the Olympics in 1988 touched off a run of success that has never been rivaled by a female track and field athlete. At the 1988 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee won gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump, extending her world record heptathlon points total to 7,291 points. The Games were noteworthy on a number of levels, most particularly the explosive steroid scandal precipitated by the positive drug test of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. In this environment, the remarkable double Olympic gold medal achievement of Joyner-Kersee was not given the degree of media illumination it might otherwise have attracted.
At the age of 30, a point in the careers of many track and field performers when they have an extremely difficult time in maintaining elite performance levels, Joyner-Kersee repeated her gold medal performance in Seoul in the heptathlon at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. She also won a bronze medal in the long jump at those Games.
With the Olympics scheduled for Atlanta in 1996, Joyner-Kersee expressed her intense desire to compete in another Olympics on American soil; Atlanta would represent a fourth consecutive Olympics, a remarkable achievement in the world of multi-sport competitions such as the heptathlon. No athlete in the men's decathlon or the heptathlon had ever won a medal at 34, Joyner-Kersee's age in 1996.
At the Atlanta Olympics, Joyner-Kersee sustained a hamstring injury and was forced to withdraw from the heptathlon. Joyner-Kersee was able to win an Olympic bronze medal in the long jump.
As the string of Olympics success enjoyed by Joyner-Kersee appeared to have ended at the 1996 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee continued to compete in track and field events, but she began to direct her primary attention to charitable causes and projects. Two key initiatives made by Joyner-Kersee included the Nike company PLAY (Participate in the Lives of American Youth) program, the raising of funds for local youth activity centers in East St. Louis, and the establishment of a scholarship fund, the Joyner-Kersee Community Foundation.
In 1998, Joyner-Kersee took what was a unique step for a track and field athlete by becoming a certified player agent with the National Football League Players Association. Joyner-Kersee created a sports management company in support of her work as a player agent to represent a number of athletes in a variety of sports. By the end of that year, Joyner-Kersee was the agent representing a number of NFL players.
Joyner-Kersee continued to successfully compete at an international level. In 1998, she won a gold medal in the heptathlon in the Goodwill Games. After this victory, she announced that she was retiring from sports, but the powerful hold of competition was not finally shaken until the 2000 United States Olympic trials, where Joyner-Kersee unsuccessfully attempted to make her fifth straight national team.
Joyner-Kersee continues with her various professional and charitable works following the 2000 Olympic trials. She established a youth organization headquartered in East St. Louis, the Joyner-Kersee Boys and Girls Club.
Currently, she is on the Board of Directors for USA Track & Field (USATF), the national governing body of the sport.
(Running For Dummies is for everyone with a desire to run....)
1999
Religion
Jackie publicly acknowledged the deep religious faith instilled in her at home by joining a Baptist congregation in 1985.
Views
Jackie Joyner-Kersee has helped to build the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation in her hometown of East St. Louis. It provides youth, adults, and families with athletic, academic lessons, and the resources to improve their quality of life.
Joyner-Kersee is also one of the founders of Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization that helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes.
Quotations:
"It's better to look ahead and prepare, than to look back and regret."
"Age is no barrier. It's a limitation you put on your mind."
"I love track and field, but I also know the day will come when I will have to do something else."
"There are a lot of other people that really play a significant role in helping you become an Olympian."
"Teaching kids about health and fitness is important to me. It's about being fit for life."
"I really do miss playing basketball. I don't play a lot of pick-up games. But I do like using basketball as a form of cross-training."
"There are few restrictions on your life with asthma, as long as you take care of yourself."
"What people need to know is that asthma isn't a minor 'wheeze-disease.' It kills over five thousand people in America every year, and I could've been one of them."
"Once I leave this earth, I know I've done something that will continue to help others."
"Ask any athlete: We all hurt at times. I'm asking my body to go through seven different tasks. To ask it not to ache would be too much."
"I don't think being an athlete is unfeminine. I think of it as a kind of grace."
"I learned to listen and listen very well. It helped me athletically and in the classroom as well."
"There are many women who came before me who didn't really have the same opportunities that I have had. That's why I always wanted to be a great ambassador - not only today's generation - but for the women who really didn't have a voice, but who paved the way for me."
"Your environment doesn't define you. I don't have a lot of money, but I can help train people and I can talk to people. We can all be mentors to the next generation."
"I have this burning desire to get out there and do my best. It's as if I'm keeping it all in a little bottle, and it's all going to come out when I do the best I'm capable of doing."
Personality
Jackie Joyner-Kersee has an impressive sense of humility in regard to her accomplishments. Jackie respected the fact that there was more to life than just athletics and competition. She was known more for humility than for her athletic accomplishments. Because Jackie Joyner is selfless, she is recognized for her humble and compassionate personality. She is not known to be ill-tempered and cares about her fellow competitors just as if they were family.
Joyner-Kersee also presents selflessness through her behaviors and actions. She had long been known not only as a star athlete but also as a generous and gracious person who was committed to helping others.
Physical Characteristics:
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) tall and weighs 154 lb (70 kg). She has overcome severe asthma.
Interests
dance
Sport & Clubs
basketball, volleyball
Connections
On January 11, 1986, Jackie Joyner married Bob Kersee.
Father:
Alfred Joyner
Mother:
Mary Joyner
Spouse:
Bob Kersee
Brother:
Alfrederick Joyner
Friend:
Heike Drechsler
References
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
A biography of the Olympic track and field star who has excelled in the long jump and heptathlon.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
An overview of the athletic accomplishments of the track star who has been called the "first lady of the heptathlon."
1996
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
The book profiles the life and career of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, from her poverty-stricken childhood, through her struggle with asthma, to her success as a world champion in the long jump and heptathlon.