46 Fun Facts About Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Joyner-Kersee won the 1991 world long jump title in which city, days before Mike Powell broke Bob Beamon's record there?

Tokyo. Days after her win, Carl Lewis beat Beamon's mark with the wind at his back, only for Powell to answer on his next jump with 8.95 m, legal and farther still.

Joyner-Kersee won her sixth and last Olympic medal on home soil, in which city?

Atlanta. Injured and out of the heptathlon, she jumped into the bronze-medal place with the very last leap of her Olympic career, which her husband called a medal of courage.

In which Illinois city was Jackie Joyner born in 1962?

East St. Louis. In 1988 she set up a foundation for children growing up in the same hard-pressed city, and a youth centre there now carries her name.

After whom was the future champion, born Jacqueline Joyner, named?

Jackie Kennedy. Her grandmother insisted on the First Lady's name, saying: 'Some day this girl will be the first lady of something.'

A film about which multi-sport star inspired the young Joyner to take up combined events?

Babe Didrikson Zaharias. The film showed an Olympic track champion of 1932 who went on to conquer professional golf, and the young Joyner set out to be just as versatile.

Glynis Nunn, who beat Joyner to the first Olympic heptathlon title in 1984, competed for which country?

Australia. Having won the biggest prize at her first attempt, Nunn gave up the heptathlon straight after Los Angeles to concentrate on hurdling.

At which university did Joyner-Kersee win two national collegiate heptathlon titles?

UCLA. An assistant coach there, Bob Kersee, saw her all-round talent and steered her towards the multi-event contest in 1981; they married in 1986.

Which Bob Kersee pupil overtook Joyner-Kersee's six medals to become America's most decorated woman in Olympic track and field?

Allyson Felix. After breaking with her sponsor over pay for athletes who become mothers, she founded her own shoe company and won her tenth and eleventh Olympic medals wearing its spikes.

Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to win two Olympic heptathlon titles; who became the first to win three, in 2024?

Nafissatou Thiam. The Belgian won at three Games running, though her best score, 7,013 points in 2017, is well short of the American's world record.

In 2000 Joyner-Kersee and her husband co-owned a team that entered a race in which motorsport series?

NASCAR. Their team put David Green's car in the 2000 Bud Shootout at Daytona, then pulled out of the Daytona 500 that followed.

Why were the leading East German and Soviet heptathletes missing when Joyner won Olympic silver in 1984?

Their countries boycotted the Games. The Soviet Union and most of its allies stayed away from Los Angeles and held their own Friendship Games that summer instead.

Which phrase, from her own words on being a woman in sport, is the title of Joyner-Kersee's 1997 autobiography?

A Kind of Grace. She once said she did not think being an athlete unfeminine but thought of it 'as a kind of grace'.

What is the men's Olympic counterpart to the women's heptathlon?

Decathlon. Men do have a heptathlon of their own, but only indoors, where seven events stand in for the ten they contest outdoors.

By how many points did Joyner lose the 1984 Olympic heptathlon gold to Glynis Nunn?

Five. Competing with a heavily strapped leg, she needed to stay within about two seconds of Nunn in the final race and fell short by a third of a second.

At which 1986 event did Joyner-Kersee become the first woman to score 7,000 points in the heptathlon?

The Goodwill Games. Ted Turner had founded them to bring American and Soviet athletes back together after the rows over the two previous Olympics, and her 7,148 points beat the old record by 202.

Which honour for the top amateur athlete in the United States did Joyner-Kersee receive in 1986?

The James E. Sullivan Award. It came in the year she first broke the world record, and two years later the same trophy went to her sister-in-law.

At which Olympics did Joyner-Kersee win gold in both of her events?

She was the first American woman to win Olympic gold in either event.

Joyner-Kersee's Olympic heptathlon record survived the 2012 Games, where which home favourite won gold in London?

Jessica Ennis. She won by more than 300 points in front of a home crowd, yet her 6,955 was still more than 300 short of the American's record.

Which country's athletes took both silver and bronze behind Joyner-Kersee when she set her heptathlon world record?

East Germany. Silver went to Sabine John, whose world record Joyner-Kersee had taken two years earlier and now left 345 points behind.

Which injury hampered Joyner-Kersee as she narrowly lost the 1984 Olympic title and ended her last Olympic heptathlon in 1996?

A hamstring strain. In 1984 she competed with the leg strapped; in 1996 the pain returned after the first event, and she withdrew in tears before the second.

Who won the long jump at Barcelona 1992, where Joyner-Kersee took bronze?

Heike Drechsler. They were great rivals and close friends, and the two had briefly shared the world record after Joyner-Kersee equalled Drechsler's 7.45 m in 1987.

When injury forced Joyner-Kersee out of the 1996 Olympic heptathlon, Ghada Shouaa won the first Olympic gold for which country?

Syria. Shouaa, who had taken up athletics only in 1991, arrived as world champion, and as of 2024 hers remains the only Olympic gold her country has won.

After the 1996 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee briefly turned professional in which other sport?

Basketball. She had been a four-year starter in college, but with the Richmond Rage of the new American Basketball League she played sparingly and left in mid-season to return to the long jump.

Bob Kersee, Joyner-Kersee's husband and coach, has since 2020 guided which American to world records in the 400 m hurdles?

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Under Kersee she broke the world record several times and won the Olympic title in 2021 and 2024, then in 2025 switched to the flat 400 m and won that world title as well.

In which event did Jackie's brother Al Joyner win Olympic gold in 1984?

Triple jump. He was a surprise winner, having upset the favourite Willie Banks at the US trials, and he later married and coached a sprinter who became more famous still.

Which sprinter married Jackie's brother Al in 1987?

Florence Griffith. As Flo-Jo she left Bob Kersee's club weeks before the next Olympics to be coached by her new husband alone, and won three golds there.

From which chronic condition did Joyner-Kersee suffer throughout her athletic career?

Severe asthma. She learned she had it in 1983, went on to suffer several full-blown attacks, and sometimes competed wearing a mask.

Which throwing event joins the shot put among the seven events of the heptathlon?

Javelin. It was the one event she failed to dominate in her world-record heptathlon: first or second in every event before it, she placed only fourth in this throw.

Which event opens the women's heptathlon?

100 m hurdles. At her last Olympics it was the only one of the seven events she finished: already hurt, she ran the hurdles and then withdrew from the heptathlon.

Which event closes the heptathlon?

800 metres. When she set her world record her lead was already so large that the gold was all but won, so she ran the two laps purely to beat her own previous mark.

Which combined event did the heptathlon replace for women in the early 1980s?

The pentathlon. As a teenager Joyner won four national junior titles in a row in the older contest, then took silver when its seven-event successor made its Olympic debut in 1984.

Which Midwestern city staged both the 1987 Pan American Games and the 1988 US Olympic track trials, scenes of Joyner-Kersee world records?

Indianapolis. She equalled the long jump record there in 1987, then set a heptathlon mark at the trials on the very day her sister-in-law ran her 100 m world record.

In 1996 Joyner-Kersee became the first winner of the Women's Sports Foundation's courage award, named after which American athlete?

Wilma Rudolph. As a child she could not walk without an orthopaedic support, yet she won three sprint golds at the 1960 Olympics; the award was created two years after her death.

Which honour did track and field's international governing body give Joyner-Kersee in 1994?

World Athlete of the Year. She was 32, eight years on from her first world record, yet she ended that season ranked the world's number one long jumper for the third time.

Since 2013 USA Track & Field's top female athlete has received the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award; whose name is on the men's equivalent?

Jesse Owens. Until 2013 both prizes bore his name, and Joyner-Kersee had been the first athlete to win the Jesse Owens Award two years running, in 1986 and 1987.

Joyner-Kersee helped launch the charity Athletes for Hope in 2007 alongside Andre Agassi, Mia Hamm and which boxing great?

Muhammad Ali. The founders had found that many athletes want to give back but don't know where to begin, so the charity links them with causes and teaches them how to help.

Which magazine named Joyner-Kersee the greatest female athlete of the 20th century?

Sports Illustrated for Women. Its 1999 list put her first among the century's sportswomen, one place above the all-rounder whose life story had inspired her as a girl.

In which Italian city did Joyner-Kersee win both the heptathlon and the long jump at the 1987 World Championships?

Rome. At her first world championships four years earlier an injury had forced her out of the heptathlon; this time she won it and the long jump as well.

In 2025 which American, mentored by Joyner-Kersee, became her country's first world heptathlon champion since her?

Anna Hall. Joyner-Kersee had backed her through a broken foot and knee surgery, and months before the title Hall scored 7,032 points, a total that only her mentor had ever beaten.

What did Jackie Joyner's mother forbid her children to do until they turned 18?

Go on dates. Mary Joyner had married in her teens herself, and with boys off limits Jackie poured herself into sport and her studies, graduating in the top tenth of her class.

Joyner-Kersee became national spokesperson for which company's Internet Essentials programme, offering cheap broadband to low-income families?

Comcast. Launched in 2011, the scheme sells cheap broadband and laptops to homes where children would otherwise have no internet for their schoolwork.

Joyner-Kersee's last Olympic medal was bronze behind Chioma Ajunwa, a former World Cup footballer competing for which country?

Nigeria. Ajunwa took the lead with her first jump and was never caught, only weeks after returning from a four-year doping ban.

As a schoolgirl Jackie Joyner reached the long jump final at the US trials for which Olympics?

Moscow. She finished eighth as a high-school senior, though even the winners stayed home: the United States kept its team away from the 1980 Games.

Joyner-Kersee came out of retirement to try for a fifth Olympics, falling short at the US trials for which Games?

Sydney 2000. At 38 she finished sixth in the long jump at the trials, which Marion Jones won, and she retired for good a few months later.

As of 2025, only Joyner-Kersee has ever scored more than the 7,032 points first reached in 2007 by which Swede?

Carolina Klüft. She reached that total in winning a third straight world title, then chose to concentrate on the long jump instead, still 259 points short of the record.

In 2023 Joyner-Kersee appeared in the PBS film Groundbreakers, hosted by which tennis great?

Billie Jean King. The film marked fifty years of Title IX, the law that opened school sport to American girls, and paired Joyner-Kersee in conversation with Naomi Osaka.