Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Track and field

She was named Jackie after then-first lady Jackie Kennedy, because her grandmother declared, “Someday this girl will be the first lady of something.” She was told by her husband-coach Bobby Kersee that she could not use her married name until she broke a world record. She became so dominant in her sport that Kersee named a new opponent for her: Wilhelmina World Record.

At 34, Jackie Joyner-Kersee remains the biggest name in women’s track and field as she embarks upon her fourth Olympic Games today. For the first time since 1984, she is not the clearcut favorite in the two-day, seven-event heptathlon (100-meter dash, high jump, shot put, 200 meters, long jump, javelin throw, 800 meters), but she is a slight favorite in next week’s long jump.

She already has three Olympic golds (two heptathlon, one long jump), one silver (heptathlon), one bronze (long jump). But, clearly, she is not the overwhelming presence she once was. She was nagged by a leg injury and battling a cold at last month’s Olympic Trials, when she finished second in the heptathlon, but Joyner-Kersee insists that she still is capable of winning two more golds.

She once held the world record in the long jump (24 feet, 5-1/2 inches) and still holds the world record in the heptathlon (7,291 points). Both Joyner-Kersee and Kersee say this will be her last Olympics; they want to start a family and, besides, Kersee said, he took a lifelong vow as husband, but not as coach.