Jackie Joyner-Kersee's heptathlon world record has stood since 1988
At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Jackie Joyner-Kersee piled up 7,291 points across seven events, a heptathlon score nobody has matched since. Five days later she won the long jump too. She had also started at forward for UCLA's basketball team, and briefly played the game professionally, which says something about her range.
She was born in 1962 in East St. Louis, Illinois, into a poor family, and named after Jacqueline Kennedy. A community track programme hooked her on running at nine. In high school she played basketball and volleyball as well as track, and reached the long jump final at the 1980 Olympic Trials. A film about Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the all-round star of an earlier era, inspired her to try multi-event competition.
UCLA gave her an athletic scholarship, and she excelled in two sports at once. On the court she started at forward in four seasons and scored 1,167 points, sitting out one year to prepare for the 1984 Games. Her mother died suddenly of meningitis during those college years, and her coach Bob Kersee helped her through the grief; they married after she graduated. In 2001 a vote among NCAA member schools named her the top woman college athlete of the previous 25 years.
Her Olympic story began with a near miss: favourite for the heptathlon in Los Angeles in 1984, she lost gold to Australia's Glynis Nunn by five points. In 1986 at the Goodwill Games she became the first woman to break 7,000 points. Seoul then brought double gold, with an Olympic record long jump of 7.40 metres, making her the first American woman to win either event.
Injuries shaped her later years. At the 1991 world championships, already winning the long jump, she slipped on the board, tumbled into the pit and hurt a hamstring. She retained her heptathlon title in Barcelona in 1992, then in Atlanta withdrew after the hurdles with pain but recovered to take long jump bronze. She has since founded a youth foundation in her hometown and co-founded Athletes for Hope.
Source: Jackie Joyner-Kersee
