Valley Ties Keep Joyner-Kersee on Track

Jackie Joyner-Kersee has been called the most dominant American track athlete of the past 10 years. She’s been compared to the legendary Babe Didrikson, who many believe to have been the greatest female athlete ever.

Joyner-Kersee, 35, doesn’t pay much attention to such hype. It may be because the three-time Olympic gold medalist and part-time Valley resident sometimes has trouble coming to grips with her own success.

“I just wanted to be an Olympian,” she told The Times in 1992. “In my dreams I never envisioned people asking for my autograph, going to the White House, being able to travel the world, meeting different people. . . . It all stuns me at times.”

A veteran of four Olympics, Joyner-Kersee also has one silver and two bronze medals. She owns six No. 1 rankings in the heptathlon and three in the long jump. She set a world record in the heptathlon in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul by scoring 7,291 points and becoming the first American woman to hold a multiple-event record since Didrikson in 1932.

Joyner-Kersee also set an Olympic long-jump record in Seoul during the heptathlon.

She was raised in East St. Louis, Ill., where she was also a standout in basketball at East St. Louis High School. She accepted a basketball scholarship to UCLA, where she earned All-American honors in both sports and met Coach Bob Kersee, whom she married.

The couple bought a house in Canoga Park in 1988 but sold it in 1993 to move Joyner-Kersee’s home base back to East St. Louis. They continue to live and train in the Valley from January to June.

Bob Kersee, who grew fond of the Valley while coaching at Cal State Northridge, has described Jackie as “my wife, my athlete, my best friend and the best woman athlete in the world.”