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Medal record
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Women's athletics
Olympic Games
Gold	1988 Seoul	Heptathlon
Gold	1988 Seoul	Long jump
Gold	1992 Barcelona	Heptathlon
Silver	1984 Los Angeles	Heptathlon
Bronze	1992 Barcelona	Long jump
Bronze	1996 Atlanta	Long jump
World Championships
Gold	1987 Rome	Long jump
Gold	1987 Rome	Heptathlon
Gold	1991 Tokyo	Long jump
Gold	1993 Stuttgart	Heptathlon

Jackie Joyner-Kersee (born March 3, 1962 in East St. Louis, Illinois) is a retired American athlete, ranked amongst the all-time greatest in heptathlon as well as the long jump. She won three gold, one silver and two bronze Olympic medals.

Contents 1 Early life 1.1 UCLA 2 Competition 2.1 1984 Summer Olympics 2.2 1986 Goodwill Games 2.3 1988 Summer Olympics 2.4 1992 Summer Olympics 2.5 Professional Basketball Career 2.6 1998 Goodwill Games 2.7 2000 Olympic Trials 3 Current world records 4 Personal life 5 External links

Jacqueline Joyner was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. She was named after Jackie Kennedy. She was inspired to compete in multi-discipline events after seeing a 1975 television movie about "Babe" Didrikson. She attended Lincoln High School.

Jackie attended college at UCLA, where she starred in both track and basketball from 1980-1985. In basketball, she played forward and scored more than 1,000 points during her career. She was honored on February 21, 1998 as one of the 15 greatest players in UCLA women's basketball. ^[1]

In April 2001, Jackie was voted the "Top Woman Collegiate Athlete of the Past 25 Years." The vote was conducted among the 976 NCAA member schools.^[2]

Jackie competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and earned a silver medal in the heptathlon.

Joyner-Kersee 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 heptathlete in the United States.

In the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea, Jackie earned gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump. At the 1988 Games in Seoul, 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, she won her second gold, leaping an Olympic record 24-3.5 in the long jump.

In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Jackie earned her third Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon.

In 1996 she 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 four points in any game.

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

Joyner-Kersee made her final bow in track & field competition in 2000. She was sixth in the long jump (21-10.75) at the Olympic Trials, closing one of the greatest careers in U.S. track & field history.

As of August 2007, Joyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon along with six all time best results and 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 in top 60 all time in those events.

Sports Illustrated voted her the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee's heptathlon series could be viewed as achieved in an era where performance enhancing, and forbidden, drugs were very common. However Joyner-Kersee always has advocated staying drug-free. She consistently has maintained that she has competed throughout her career without performance-enhancing drugs.^[3][4]

Jackie Joyner-Kersee's brother, Al Joyner, is also an Olympic gold medalist, having won the Olympic triple jump in 1984. Jackie is the sister-in-law of the late Florence Griffith Joyner, who died suddenly in 1998.

As a child Jackie had also experienced death at close quarters. When she was 11, she saw a man get killed. A few years later, she called her grandmother to talk, only to find out that her grandmother, too, had been killed. Then, when she was a freshman at UCLA, Jackie had to return home suddenly when her 37-year-old mother contracted a rare form of meningitis. By the time she arrived, her mother was in a coma and brain dead. Since their father could not bring himself to have life-support removed from his wife, it fell to Jackie and Al to authorize removal, which they did.

Perhaps Jackie's greatest challenge, however, has been physical. She suffers from exercise-induced asthma, and on more than one occasion has had to be hospitalized following an event.

Jackie currently lives in East St. Louis, Illinois. A light-rail station on the St. Louis MetroLink is named for Jackie Joyner-Kersee and serves the nearby Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center in East St. Louis. She also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Jackie famously said: "Achievement is difficult. It requires enormous effort. Those who can work through the struggle are the ones who are going to be successful."

In the past few years Jackie and her husband have devoted much of their time to a non-profit organization -- The Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation -- dedicated to providing youth, adults, and families with the resources to improve their quality of life and to enhancing communities worldwide, with special attention directed toward East St. Louis.

• IAAF profile for Jackie Joyner-Kersee
• Relays Hall of Fame
• St. Louis Walk of Fame
• USA Track and Field bio
• Jackie Joyner-Kersee's U.S. Olympic Team bio
• Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner-Kersee Invitational Annual track meet event hosted by UCLA honoring her and Rafer Johnson, another outstanding UCLA Olympic gold medalist
• The Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation, founded by Jackie and her husband

Awards
Preceded by Martina Navratilova	Flo Hyman Memorial Award 1988	Succeeded by Evelyn Ashford
Sporting positions
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1987	Succeeded by Galina Chistyakova
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1994	Succeeded by Heike Drechsler
Preceded by Heike Drechsler	Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance 1996	Succeeded by Lyudmila Galkina

v • d • e Olympic champions in women's pentathlon and heptathlon
As pentathlon	1964: Irina Press • 1968: Ingrid Becker • 1972: Mary Peters • 1976: Siegrun Siegl • 1980: Nadezhda Tkachenko
As heptathlon	1984: Glynis Nunn • 1988: Jackie Joyner-Kersee • 1992: Jackie Joyner-Kersee • 1996: Ghada Shouaa • 2000: Denise Lewis • 2004: Carolina Klüft

v • d • e Olympic champions in women's long jump
1948: Olga Gyarmati • 1952: Yvette Williams • 1956: Elzbieta Krzesinska • 1960: Vera Krepkina • 1964: Mary Rand • 1968: Viorica Viscopoleanu • 1972: Heide Rosendahl • 1976: Angela Voigt • 1980: Tatyana Kolpakova • 1984: Anisoara Cusmir-Stanciu • 1988: Jackie Joyner-Kersee • 1992: Heike Drechsler • 1996: Chioma Ajunwa • 2000: Heike Drechsler • 2004: Tatyana Lebedeva