The world`s greatest woman athlete was sitting undisturbed in a Chinese restaurant a couple miles from her home in the Los Angeles suburbs. The handful of other patrons obviously didn`t recognize Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who is such a celebrity in places like Paraguay that her face is on their postage stamps.
Truth be told, Joyner-Kersee was almost pleased that no one acknowledged her presence. Occasional anonymity has its rewards.
It meant she could eat her lemon chicken and mixed vegetables without any interruption except the occasional cramp in her legs. And, more importantly, the idea of not being acclaimed everywhere as Olympic champion and world record-holder reinforced the mindset she wants to have going into her third Olympics.
Joyner-Kersee won an Olympic silver medal in the heptathlon in 1984 and golds in the heptathlon and long jump in 1988. She will defend both those titles here.
”In Seoul four years ago, being in position to win and knowing I had the ability to do it was a lot easier because I didn`t have the gold medal yet,” she said.
”Now things are a lot different. I am the champion but I have to put myself in a position where I am the underdog. The people behind me are in the position I was in 1988, so I have to make sure my desire and motivation are a lot greater than they were in 1988. That makes it a lot harder.”
Until recently, making herself an underdog in the heptathlon was going to require sleight of mind. After all, no one but Joyner-Kersee has ever scored more than 7,000 points in the seven-event test of skill and will, and she has done it five times.
But her last big score was the world record of 7,291 at the 1988 Olympics. Since then, Joyner-Kersee has not topped 6,878. Her winning score at last month`s U.S. Olympic Trials was just 6,695. That is both her lowest total since 1985 and well under this year`s world-leading score, 6,985, by reigning world champion Sabine Braun of Germany.
In the Olympic long jump, Joyner-Kersee is at best a co-favorite with longtime rival Heike Dreschler of Germany. Dreschler, second to Joyner-Kersee in both the 1988 Olympics and 1991 World Championships, has the world-leading jump this season.
The heptathlon has seven events-100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200 meters on the first day; long jump, javelin and 800 meters on the second. Points are awarded for each event based on performance level.
In most domestic competition since 1986, Joyner-Kersee could have skipped one of the seven events and still won.
But her consistently lower scores since the 1988 Olympics have revived old rumors about drug use.
Others have suggested since that Joyner-Kersee, who has never been tested positive, was like many athletes who simply beat the system of scheduled testing in the past.
”People hear all kinds of stories,” said Bob Kersee, her husband and coach. ”Once they see Jackie going through (short-notice) drug testing and continuing to win medals, it will show critics that don`t know you or are jealous of you that there are drug-free athletes.”
And if she wins the Olympic heptathlon with only 6,900 points? ”I could see where there might be speculation, but Jackie doesn`t have anything to prove to anybody,” he said.
That is not entirely true. Joyner-Kersee has to prove herself able to overcome her first heptathlon defeat since 1984.
She had won 13 straight heptathlons until the 1991 World Championships last August in Tokyo. Her loss there has turned into a nightmare that continues to scare the daylights out of her.
Through the first three events in Tokyo, Joyner-Kersee was on a near world-record pace. Coming out of the curve in the 200 meters, she suddenly threw her hands in the air, lurched forward and collapsed in an agonizing heap.
She had been brought down by a strained hamstring muscle, which has since healed physically. What remains is a mental scar that is potentially more damaging than the injury.
Nearly every time Joyner-Kersee runs the 200, she slows down in the curve. Bob Kersee sees it on dozens of videotapes from practice sessions. A nationwide TV audience saw it during the heptathlon at the Olympic trials.
”In January, I would be doing practice 240s and slowing down,” she said, ”My teammates asked me what was happening, and I said, `You wouldn`t believe this: I keep seeing myself hitting the ground.`
”Then I began to cry. Bobby said that was the first step in trying to heal myself from what happened last August.”
Both are still waiting for the next step, proof in a competition that Joyner-Kersee can blast through the curve with her customary speed. Said Bob Kersee after the trials: ”She has to get over this fear.”
The promotional work she has done for sponsors and for the Jackie Joyner- Kersee Foundation in East St. Louis has kept her on the road constantly since the last Olympics. Training has often been an afterthought, done haphazardly in hotel health clubs and on city streets instead of under her coaches` supervision at the UCLA weight room and track.
Her training habits are also a constant irritant to Bob Kersee. They drive him even crazier now that she has enough knowledge to question nearly all his coaching decisions instead of merely 75 percent of them.
”She is a little harder for me to motivate through my tactic of intimidation,” Bob Kersee said. ”Either she tries to intimidate back or she turns the volume down, like I`m a loud radio. That makes me really have to become a monster to get across the point I`m not playing with her.
”The difference is, I don`t argue with Jackie as much as I would have liked to, and I don`t get as mad as I used to. I have been looking to regain control of coaching Jackie.”
The complex relationship between this couple, who have been coach and athlete for 10 years and husband and wife for 6 1/2, seems to bring out the differences and the best for both.
”Multi-eventers train not to get hurt,” she explained of their arguing. ”I`m not naturally rebellious.”
”I understand that,” Bob Kersee said. ”I`m sure that in the back of her mind she is still saying, `My coach might have cost me that injury. My coach is also my husband who I have to live with.` ”
The coaching part of the deal will apparently continue another four years. Joyner-Kersee decided to try for a fourth Olympics when the 1996 Games were awarded to Atlanta. That choice also has to do with a haunting heptathlon defeat, her second-place at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. There, a sore hamstring and a poor performance in the heptathlon long jump cost her the gold.
”If I`m healthy,” she said, ”I hope to stay around and try to end my career with a gold medal on American soil.”
