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Success a constant companion for JJK

Jackie Joyner-Kersee blazed a golden trail since leaving East St. Louis. 

East St. Louis native and track legend

Jackie Joyner-Kersee blazed a golden trail since leaving East St. Louis. A child named for former presidential first lady Jackie Kennedy, she went on to become the first lady of female athletics and arguably the greatest of all time. And in doing so, she created a three-letter legacy: JJK.

She was born facing enormous odds against reaching the kind of success she would seemingly come by naturally: born to teenage parents in a rough town; and burdened with athletic-induced asthma, she cast a light her mother saw from her first moments. Mary Joyner wrote on the back of Jackie’s first baby picture, “A star is born.” One of her grandmothers foresaw the youngster becoming the “first lady of something.”

Yet it took a few years for the star to begin to shine. Nino Fennoy, the legendary track coach, began to coach Jackie at the age of eleven, and by the time she got to the now-closed East St. Louis Lincoln High School her skills had reached championship levels. As a sophomore she won the state title in the 440-yard dash and teamed with three others to win the mile relay. The long jump would become one of her signature events, but she would only finish second in 1978; no matter – she would win that event the next two years and set a mark at the state meet as a junior that still stands 37 years later. Her team was the overall champion in each of her three competing high school years.

She would play a little basketball, too. The Tigerettes finished as state runners-up when Jackie was a junior, and then as a senior she would average 20 points and 16 rebounds in leading Lincoln to the 2A title, finishing that year 31-0 and 86-5 over her three years on the hardwood.

Before she even began her college career she made it to the national stage, qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Trials in 1980 and finishing eighth. She was just eighteen. Then it was off to UCLA to compete in track & field and in basketball, but also where she received her degree in history, which she calls her greatest achievement away from the track. Jackie started each of the four years she played on the basketball team, and saved her best for her final year, making first-team all-conference by averaging a career-best in points and rebounds and moving into the 1000-point club for her career. Maybe only coincidentally, she wore the uniform number 23 sported by another iconic athletic figure, Michael Jordan. Three times as a Lady Bruin she would be named the All-University Athlete.

Jackie sat out a redshirt year so she could concentrate on track, and learning how to master the grueling heptathlon, the seven-event equivalent of the men’s decathlon that signified the world’s greatest athlete. Her international debut in the event would come not too far from the UCLA campus; the L.A. Coliseum during the 1984 Olympics. Competing for the U.S. along with her brother Al, who would win gold in the triple jump, she did well enough in the two-day heptathlon - comprised of the 100 meter hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put, javelin, 200 and then 800 meters – to finish with a silver medal, a mere five points away from gold.

1986 was a memorable year for Jackie Joyner (now Joyner-Kersee, after marrying her coach, Bob Kersee): in addition to that and receiving her degree she also was named the winner of the Sullivan Award as the “most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States.” She was merely setting the stage for the Seoul Olympics of 1988, where she would put on a dazzling show for the world.

JJK overcame a knee strain that put her behind her record heptathlon pace with a remarkable second-day performance; Jackie set a personal best in the 800 meters that gave her the gold and established a new world record point total for the fourth time. She then capped the Games with her second gold medal in the long jump, this time with a leap of 24 feet, 4 ¼ inches, a mark that still stands in Olympic history along with her 7,291 points in the heptathlon.

By now the awards were pouring over Jackie like the waters over Niagara Falls; USOC Sportswoman of the Year, A. P. Female Athlete of the Year, The Sporting News Athlete of the Year, and twice the winner of the Jesse Owens Memorial Award as the track athlete of the year. The awards continued leading up to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, where she repeated as the champion in the heptathlon (the only woman to have back-to-back scores of over seven thousand points) and captured the bronze medal in the long jump.

When the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in Atlanta got underway in 1996, it was Jackie who provided the most poignant moments. NBC cameras captured JJK straining in a rainstorm to clear the hurdles in the opening event of the heptathlon, her leg tightly wrapped; she had damaged her hamstring qualifying during the Olympic Trials. It was clear that she would struggle to complete the competition, as well as damage her chances to medal in the long jump. Again it was NBC’s images of a tearful Jackie being consoled by her husband, telling her to withdraw and save herself for the long jump later in the games. Even then she had only mustered a sixth-place standing in the event with one jump remaining. Summoning up her considerable competitive fire, she streaked down the runway and soared to her best jump that week – enough to bring her the bronze, her sixth and final Olympic medal.

At the age of 34, it was anticipated that she would wind down her athletic career; not so. Jackie signed to play basketball for the Richmond Rage of the fledgling ABL later in 1996, though her career there lasted just 17 games. She did complete one more moment in the sun by winning the heptathlon competition in the 1998 Goodwill Games. Later that month she gave the hometown supporters an emotional farewell in Edwardsville, Illinois, twenty miles from where her journey began. She took a ceremonial final long jump and then circled the track to say goodbye. More awards would follow; the UCLA Professional Achievement Award and a spot in that university’s Athletic Hall of Fame, the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame, and Summer Olympian of the Century. The Jesse Owens Award she twice won previously was split into male and female winners in 1996, with the women’s winner being given the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award.

Yet, like most truly great athletes Jackie found it hard to truly bid adieu to the regimen and reward of competition. In 2000, she made a bid to qualify for her fifth Olympic team but fell short in the long jump.

The grace that has been Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s trademark has carried over into her post-athletic career. She continues to be active in the community through her various endeavors, including the center in East St. Louis that bears her name. Her namesake foundation continues to improve the quality of life for the area and gives young people the opportunity to leap into state, national, and world fame and accomplishment as she once did.

As a youngster she was inspired by a movie depicting the life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who was voted as the greatest female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century. Jackie Joyner-Kersee would be fueled by that inspiration throughout a career that led Sports Illustrated vote her as the greatest female athlete of the entire century.

JJK, the first lady of American athletics.

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