The Blog of Awesome Women / Jackie Joyner-Kersee: Queen of the Field

Arguably the greatest cross category track and field star of all time, Jackie Joyner-Kersee has a string of firsts to her credit and keeps racking them up at an astonishing rate: she’s the first U.S. woman to win gold for the long jump, the first woman ever to exceed 7,000 points for the heptathalon, and the first athlete, man or woman, to win multiple gold medals in both single and multiple events in track and field. Since her debut in the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Events, Jackie has been at the top of her game.

Along with her athletic prowess, Jackie’s charisma and style made her an overnight sensation. In addition, she has a policy of giving back as good as she gets to the community she’s from. She has a strong desire to nurture athleticism and scholarship in urban settings where access to a place to run and play is the first of many challenges ghetto kids face. Her foundation, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation, is currently developing a recreational and educational facility for kids in East St. Louis where area kids will have access to a computer lab, library, ball fields, basketball courts, and of course, indoor and outdoor tracks.

Like several other outstanding athletes, Jackie comes from poverty, an alum of the poorest part of East St. Louis. Fortunately, Jackie received encouragement from her family to participate in sports. She discovered track and field at the Mayor Brown Community Center, and her Olympic dreams started when she saw the 1976 Olympics on television. Jackie quickly emerged a veritable “sporting savant” and started breaking national records at fourteen, excelling at basketball and volleyball while maintaining a super grade point average. Soon she was courted by many tantalizing college scholarships, ultimately deciding to attend UCLA where Bob Kersee would be her coach.

Bob Kersee, whom she married in 1986, convinced both Jackie and the powers-that-be at UCLA that Jackie’s career lay in multitrack events. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine Jackie anywhere but in the event where she is the best in the world. Jackie’s forte is the seven-event heptathalon, a previously overlooked event in which athletes earn points by running a 200-meter dash, compete in both high and long jumps, throw both the javelin and shot put, run the 100-meter hurdles, and complete a 800-meter run, all in two days. These herculean challenges alone call for super-sheroism, and Jackie has not only made the heptathalon her own, but through her prowess, made the event a track and field favorite.

She is one of the few African American athletes to get prestigious product endorsement contracts and is very aware of her opportunity to provide a positive role model, telling Women’s Sports & Fitness, “I feel that as an African American woman the only thing I can do is continue to better myself, continue to perform well, continue to make sure that I’m a good commodity. If doors aren’t opened for me, then maybe it will happen for someone else.”

“I understand the position I am in, but I also know that tomorrow there’s going to be someone else. So I try to keep things in perspective.”—Jackie Joyner-Kersee