Jackie Joyner-Kersee Trivia
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46 free Jackie Joyner-Kersee trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Jackie Joyner-Kersee trivia quiz follows the East St. Louis girl named after a First Lady from a community track programme at nine to a UCLA scholarship, where she started at forward for the Bruins basketball team while becoming the best heptathlete in history. It covers the five-point loss to Glynis Nunn in Los Angeles, the first 7,000-point heptathlon, the 1988 Seoul double gold with a 7,291-point world record that still stands, and the long jump medals of Barcelona and Atlanta. The rest of the quiz looks at the seven events of the heptathlon and their order, her personal bests, the coach she married, the brother who won triple jump gold in 1984 and the sister-in-law who was Flo-Jo, the doping allegations she has always denied, the asthma she competed with, her brief pro basketball career with the Richmond Rage, and the awards, from the Sullivan Award to the USATF prize renamed in her honour. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Olympic athletics and track and field quizzes next.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Joyner-Kersee won the 1991 world long jump title in which city, days before Mike Powell broke Bob Beamon's record there?
Tokyo
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.
Q 02Joyner-Kersee won her sixth and last Olympic medal on home soil, in which city?
Atlanta
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.
Q 03In which Illinois city was Jackie Joyner born in 1962?
East St. Louis
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.
Q 04After whom was the future champion, born Jacqueline Joyner, named?
Jackie Kennedy
Jackie Kennedy. Her grandmother insisted on the First Lady's name, saying: 'Some day this girl will be the first lady of something.'
Q 05A film about which multi-sport star inspired the young Joyner to take up combined events?
Babe Didrikson Zaharias
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.
Q 06Glynis Nunn, who beat Joyner to the first Olympic heptathlon title in 1984, competed for which country?
Australia
Australia. Having won the biggest prize at her first attempt, Nunn gave up the heptathlon straight after Los Angeles to concentrate on hurdling.
Q 07At which university did Joyner-Kersee win two national collegiate heptathlon titles?
UCLA
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.
Q 08Which Bob Kersee pupil overtook Joyner-Kersee's six medals to become America's most decorated woman in Olympic track and field?
Allyson Felix
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.
Q 09Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to win two Olympic heptathlon titles; who became the first to win three, in 2024?
Nafissatou Thiam
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.
Q 10In 2000 Joyner-Kersee and her husband co-owned a team that entered a race in which motorsport series?
NASCAR
NASCAR. Their team put David Green's car in the 2000 Bud Shootout at Daytona, then pulled out of the Daytona 500 that followed.
Q 11Why were the leading East German and Soviet heptathletes missing when Joyner won Olympic silver in 1984?
Their countries boycotted
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.
Q 12Which phrase, from her own words on being a woman in sport, is the title of Joyner-Kersee's 1997 autobiography?
A Kind of Grace
A Kind of Grace. She once said she did not think being an athlete unfeminine but thought of it 'as a kind of grace'.
Q 13What is the men's Olympic counterpart to the women's heptathlon?
Decathlon
Q 21Who won the long jump at Barcelona 1992, where Joyner-Kersee took bronze?
Heike Drechsler
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.
Q 22When injury forced Joyner-Kersee out of the 1996 Olympic heptathlon, Ghada Shouaa won the first Olympic gold for which country?
Syria
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.
Q 23After the 1996 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee briefly turned professional in which other sport?
Basketball
Decathlon. Men do have a heptathlon of their own, but only indoors, where seven events stand in for the ten they contest outdoors.
Q 14By how many points did Joyner lose the 1984 Olympic heptathlon gold to Glynis Nunn?
Five
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.
Q 15At which 1986 event did Joyner-Kersee become the first woman to score 7,000 points in the heptathlon?
The Goodwill Games
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.
Q 16Which honour for the top amateur athlete in the United States did Joyner-Kersee receive in 1986?
The James E. Sullivan Award
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.
Q 17At which Olympics did Joyner-Kersee win gold in both of her events?
Seoul 1988
She was the first American woman to win Olympic gold in either event.
Q 18Joyner-Kersee's Olympic heptathlon record survived the 2012 Games, where which home favourite won gold in London?
Jessica Ennis
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.
Q 19Which country's athletes took both silver and bronze behind Joyner-Kersee when she set her heptathlon world record?
East Germany
East Germany. Silver went to Sabine John, whose world record Joyner-Kersee had taken two years earlier and now left 345 points behind.
Q 20Which injury hampered Joyner-Kersee as she narrowly lost the 1984 Olympic title and ended her last Olympic heptathlon in 1996?
A hamstring strain
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.
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.
Q 24Bob Kersee, Joyner-Kersee's husband and coach, has since 2020 guided which American to world records in the 400 m hurdles?
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
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.
Q 25In which event did Jackie's brother Al Joyner win Olympic gold in 1984?
Triple jump
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.
Q 26Which sprinter married Jackie's brother Al in 1987?
Florence Griffith
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.
Q 27From which chronic condition did Joyner-Kersee suffer throughout her athletic career?
Severe asthma
Severe asthma. She learned she had it in 1983, went on to suffer several full-blown attacks, and sometimes competed wearing a mask.
Q 28Which throwing event joins the shot put among the seven events of the heptathlon?
Javelin
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.
Q 29Which event opens the women's heptathlon?
100 m hurdles
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.
Q 30Which event closes the heptathlon?
800 metres
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.