Jackie Joyner-Kersee biography
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, in full Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee, née Jacqueline Joyner, (born March 3, 1962, East St. Louis, Illinois, U.S.), American athlete who was thought of by many to be the best feminine athlete ever. She was the primary participant to attain greater than 7,000 factors within the heptathlon.
Joyner confirmed nice enthusiasm for athletics early on, and, as a young person, she received the primary of 4 consecutive National Junior Pentathlon championships. In highschool she was a decided scholar and athlete, graduating close to the highest of her class and competing on the college’s volleyball, basketball, and monitor groups. As a junior, she set the Illinois high-school women’ lengthy soar file at 6.68 metres (20 ft 7.5 inches). Her high-school success led to a scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the place she initially targeted on basketball and the lengthy soar.
Joyner started coaching for the heptathlon in 1981 beneath the tutelage of assistant monitor coach Bob Kersee, whom she married in 1986. At the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, she overcame a pulled hamstring to win the silver medal within the heptathlon, narrowly lacking the gold by 5 factors. She graduated from UCLA in 1985, and on July 7, 1986, Joyner-Kersee lastly emerged because the dominant heptathlete, setting a world file (7,148 factors) on the Goodwill Games in Moscow. Her rating bettered the outdated file by 202 factors, making her the primary heptathlete to high 7,000 factors. Joyner-Kersee set the heptathlon world file (7,291) for the fourth time whereas profitable the gold medal on the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. In 1992 in Barcelona, she grew to become the primary athlete to win the heptathlon in consecutive Olympic Games. In her ultimate Olympic look on the 1996 Games in Atlanta, she earned a bronze medal within the lengthy soar; a hamstring harm pressured her to withdraw from the heptathlon.
Joyner-Kersee’s finest heptathlon occasions have been the lengthy soar, 100-metre hurdles, 200-metre run, and excessive soar. She typically competed in single occasions, notably the lengthy soar, wherein she tied the world file (7.45 metres [24 feet 5.5 inches]) in 1987 and received the gold medal in 1988 and the bronze in 1992. After the 1996 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee performed skilled basketball with the Richmond Rage; she left the group halfway by her first season to compete within the lengthy soar indoors. In 2000 she sought to compete in her fifth Olympic Games, however she did not qualify within the U.S. trials. She formally retired the next yr.
Joyner-Kersee was concerned in numerous philanthropic organizations. In 1988 she established the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which sought to assist at-risk kids, particularly these residing in her hometown of East St. Louis, Illinois. She later cofounded (2007) Athletes for Hope, which inspired skilled athletes to grow to be energetic in charitable causes. In 2016 she grew to become concerned in an initiative backed by Comcast to offer Internet entry to low-income households, amongst different goals. Joyner-Kersee’s memoir, A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Female Athlete (cowritten with Sonja Steptoe), was revealed in 1997.