Like
other cities around the world, East St. Louis, Illinois has suffered from urban
decoy, but Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee had an oasis. It consisted of her home,
John Robinson Elementary School, Mary E. Brown Community Center and Lincoln
High School.
Joyner-Kersee left this nurturing
environment in 1980 when she received a basketball scholarship from UCLA where
she also competed in women's track and field events. Asthma and an allergic
reaction to peanuts threatened to end her promising career but prompt medical
attention, diet, and medications controlled these health problems.
Joyner-Kersee performed well
in basketball but made little progress in track until her future husband, Robert
Kersee become assistant track coach for women hurdlers and sprinters at UCLA.
This was the meeting of a gifted athlete and a brilliant coach, and their partnership
mode track and field history.
Nineteen-eighty-four was
the first year that heptathlon was an Olympic event. A grueling test of strength,
speed, skill and courage. It has been called an intense drama in seven acts:
100 meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meter dash, long jump, javelin throw,
and 800 meter run. Each part has a point value and the athlete with the most
points wins. Because of an injury Joyner-Kersee did not win a Gold Medal for
this event in the 1984 Olympics but did win the silver medal.
In 1986, Robert Kersee and
Jacqueline Joyner were married, and she became the first woman to surpass the
7000 points score in the heptathlon. This superb athlete also seta new U.S.
record for the 100 meter dash and established a new world record for the long
jump.
At the Olympic Games in Seoul,
Korea, in 1988 and at Barcelona, Spain in 1992, Joyner-Kersee won gold medals
in the heptathlon. She struck gold at the 1 990 and 1 994 Goodwill Games in
the heptathlon. In 1993, she captured her 2nd World Champion title in the heptathlon.
As a world class athlete,
she is on a number of boards and committees and is the founding president of
the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Community Foundation. It is her way of maintaining
an oasis for future generations.
