In the four years since she won the heptathlon and the long jump at the 1988 Olympic Games, Jackie Joyner-Kersee has been merely known as the world`s greatest woman athlete. Now it is clear that distinction may have been sexist, for it falls short of properly measuring her gilded dimensions.
The title of world`s greatest athlete, period, is reserved for the Olympic decathlon winner, a man. It has been that way since King Gustav V of Sweden applied it to Jim Thorpe after he won the first Olympic decathlon in 1912.
Eighty years later, on another miserably humid Barcelona night, Joyner-Kersee became the first person ever to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in the heptathlon. She also became the first person in track and field multi- events competition, the decathlon or heptathlon, to win medals in three Olympics, having begun with a silver in 1984.
The seven-event heptathlon may be a truncated version of the decathlon, but nothing can reduce the esteem this victory should bring her. One of the greatest Olympic decathlon champions, 1976 winner Bruce Jenner, was quick to show it, first to Joyner-Kersee herself and then to anyone who asked Sunday night at the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic.
”Male or female, she has done what no one else has done,” Jenner said.
”That puts her right up there as one of the greatest, if not the greatest ever.
”Sometimes the heptathlon is overshadowed by the decathlon. Hopefully, Jackie will get her place in history.”
Joyner-Kersee, 30, has consistently rewritten her own historical record over a six-year span during which she was unchallenged in the heptathlon.
She has set four world records. She has won a world title and two Olympic titles. She has the six highest scores ever in the heptathlon. She won this Olympics with the least of those six, 7,044 points. Only one other athlete has ever reached 7,000.
”For me it is a challenge to try to beat myself and do better than I did in the past,” Joyner-Kersee said. ”It has been tough mentally. People see me as being invincible.”
She had seemed that way until last August, when a pulled hamstring in the middle of the competition cost Joyner-Kersee a second straight world title. The mental scars caused by that injury left some doubt that she would be able to handle the presumed challenge of Germany`s Sabine Braun, who won the 1991 world championship in Joyner-Kersee`s absence.
The heptathlon involves seven events over two days. The first day includes the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 meters. The second has the long jump, javelin and 800 meters.
The winner is determined by scoring tables that award points based on level of performance in each of the seven events. To be a champion heptathlete requires speed, explosiveness, power and endurance-or virtually every quality of pure athleticism.
”I find myself being humbled by some of the events, like the shot put the other day (Saturday),” Joyner-Kersee said.
Despite a subpar performance in the shot put, Joyner-Kersee never trailed through the two days.
Braun`s challenge lasted until Sunday`s first event, the long jump, when her leap of only 19 feet 9 inches was worth 350 points less than Joyner-Kersee`s 23-3 1/2. Braun went on to finish 396 points behind and win the bronze medal.
Irina Belova of Russia moved into second place after Braun faltered. She finished 199 points behind Joyner-Kersee, whose winning margin was her smallest ever in a major heptathlon.
”I try to do my best all the time,” Joyner-Kersee said, ”but sometimes my best might not be my personal best. It can get disappointing at times, when I know I can do better. I try not to beat myself up but to do what I can do.” She was best of the 31 Olympic competitors in the hurdles, 200 meters and long jump, second in the high jump, eighth in the 800 meters, 11th in the shot put and 12th in the javelin. It added up to her first 7,000-point score since the world record of 7,291 at the 1988 Olympics.
That was not exactly what Bob Kersee, her husband and coach, had in mind when he bought her 30th birthday present. It was two rings, one with seven diamonds, the other with three, representing the 7,300-point score he hoped she would get here.
”That world record could still come,” he said.
First, though, is the matter of defending her long-jump title in competition that begins Thursday.
Then there could also be a third heptathlon gold medal. Joyner-Kersee has announced her intention of trying to compete through the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, expressly to get the gold medal on American soil that barely eluded her in 1984 at Los Angeles.
”For any multi-event athlete to keep going for eight years, you have to have a few screws lose,” Kersee said. ”To do it for 12 years? Maybe you don`t have any screws up there at all.”
It is hard to imagine Joyner-Kersee not having it all together. This is, after all, a young woman who came from the meanest streets in East St. Louis and turned into an American icon. She was one of the first black woman athletes to be used as an endorser by major companies.
Neither commercials nor gold medals should be the American public`s enduring memory of Jackie Joyner-Kersee. What has set her apart is not only being the world`s greatest athlete, but a remarkable ability to cope with its rewards.
”I have people who look for changes from me,” she said. ”Even friends feel like they have to treat me in a different way. They almost want you to be different.
”To me, you treat people like human beings, no matter who you are and what you have.”
Never was that more apparent than during the immediate aftermath of her injury in Tokyo. Joyner-Kersee was sitting on a stretcher when she agreed to talk to the flock of media waiting for her outside the stadium. In the midst of chaos and discomfort and disappointment, she thought of asking one of the reporters how his child was doing.
”The other day,” Joyner-Kersee recalled, ”I got a letter from a little girl who said, `All I want to say is I wish you well this summer. One day I want to be as good as you.` It just touched me.”
Joyner-Kersee told the girl just so in a return letter. Call that the golden touch, from one who rules in Olympic play and plays by the golden rule.
