Born: March 3, 1962, East St. Louis, Illinois, U.S.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is an American track-and-field athlete, who won the heptathlon event (an all-around event) at the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992. She is considered one of the greatest female athletes.
She was born Jacqueline Joyner in East Saint Louis, Illinois, and educated at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1976, at the age of 14, she won her first of four consecutive United States junior national titles in the pentathlon. After graduating from high school in 1980, she accepted a basketball scholarship to UCLA, where her coach and future husband, Bob Kersee, encouraged her to train for multiple-event contests. In 1983, she and her brother, Al Joyner, a triple jumper, represented the United States at the track-and-field world championships in Helsinki, Finland. They also competed in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where she won the silver medal in the heptathlon, a two-day event in which athletes compete in the 100-metre hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200-metre dash on the first day and in the long jump, javelin, and 800-metre race on the second day. (Al Joyner won the gold medal in the triple jump at the 1984 games.) She married Kersee in 1986, and that same year she gave up basketball to concentrate on the heptathlon, setting two world records within one month. For her accomplishments in 1986, she won the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award, given annually by the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States (AAU) to the outstanding amateur athlete in the country.
Joyner-Kersee continued her success in 1987, winning the heptathlon at the U.S. outdoor track-and-field championships, at the Pan American Games in Indianapolis, Indiana; and at the world championships in Rome, where she also won the gold medal in the long jump event. In 1988, she won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, setting a world record in the event. At the 1988 games, Joyner-Kersee also won the gold medal in the long jump, with a leap of 24 ft 3½ in (7.3 m). At the 1991 world championships in Tokyo, she won the long jump again. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she repeated her title in the heptathlon. She was also placed third in the long jump. Joyner-Kersee overcame illness in 1993 to continue her dominance in the heptathlon by earning the gold medal in the event at the world championships in Stuttgart, Germany.
