Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Wednesday, Oct. 4 to discuss "Before and After Olympic Glory." Considered by many the greatest heptathlete of all time, she won five medals over the course of four successive Olympics.
The public portion of her discussion begins at 6:45 p.m.; seating is on a first-come basis.
During the 1986 Goodwill Games, Kersee was the first woman to score 7,000 points in a heptathlon event. Still holding the world record in heptathlon, along with six all-time best results, her long jump recordof more than 23 feetranks second on the long-jump all-time list. Sports Illustrated voted Kersee the greatest female athlete of the 20th century and two years later she received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur heptathlete in the U.S. Her Olympic medals (three gold, one silver, and a bronze) were won over the course of four successive Olympics: Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, and Atlanta.
Retired from competitive sports since February 2001, Kersee has said that it's better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret. "The medals don't mean anything and the glory doesn't last, " she says. "It's all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing."
Born in East St. Louis, Illinois, Kersee attended UCLA and starred in both track and basketball. She is the sister-in-law of the late Olympic sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner. Her brother, Al Joyner, also is an Olympic gold medalist, having won the Olympic triple jump in 1984.
Along with the sudden death of her sister-in-law in 1998, Kersee has endured more than her share of tragedy. When she was just a child, her grandmother was murdered. During Kersee's freshman year at UCLA, she returned home when her 37-year-old mother contracted a rare form of meningitis that left her in a coma.
But Kersee's greatest challenge was overcoming her own physical infirmities. She suffers from exercise-induced asthma and when competing, often had to be hospitalized following her event.
In hopes of improving the quality of life for all people in her native St. Louis, she founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation in 2000 to provide innovative programs and services focused on health, education, leadership, sports and volunteerism.
To date, the Foundation has provided more than $12 million in funding to its programs. "We have come a long way and we have seen great things happen with the youth and families of East St. Louis," she says. "We are extremely proud to have helped make a difference in the lives of youth and all the people of this community."
Kersee's visit to CMC is jointly sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute, the department of physical education and athletics, and the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum.