Many people feel Jackie Joyner-Kersee is the greatest all around athlete ever. She was born in East St. Louis, Illinois on March 3, 1962. Jackie lived in a poor neighborhood. When Jackie was 10 she started to compete in track meets and winning.

When she was 14 years old Jackie won her first Junior National Title in the pentathlon. She also was a very good basketball and volleyball player in high school.

Jackie ran track and played basketball in college at UCLA. In college, Jackie broke a lot of records in track. She was also an important player on the basketball team. She had received the All University Student Athlete Award twice before she graduated from college. Now, her coach Bob Kersee wanted her to train only in track.

She went to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and won the silver medal in the heptathlon. Jackie had more that 7,000 points in the heptathlon in the 1986 Goodwill Games. This was thought to be impossible. Also in 1986, she married her coach Bob Kersee.

In the 1988 Olympics Jackie won gold medals in the heptathlon and the long jump. Jackie also got the gold medal in the heptathlon in the 1992 Olympics and got third place in the long jump. In 1996 she won her last medal in the Olympics, a bronze in the long jump. She won her last heptathlon in the Goodwill Games in 1998, at the age of 36.

She won six Olympics medals and won the heptathlon four times in a row. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is now retired from competition.

She started the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation to help kids in her old neighborhood play sports. She also wants to help girls who want to be good athletes. She thinks playing sports helps kids feel good about themselves.

People appreciate women in sports more because of what Jackie did. Jackie Joyner-Kersee proved that women can do things that people thought they could not do.

Now, Jackie wants to start a family.