Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1996) - Hall of Fame

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Induction:
1996

One of the world's greatest female athletes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was a basketball and track star at UCLA and an international star since. Joyner-Kersee is the most decorated woman in U.S. Olympic track and field history, having earned six medals while participating in four Olympic Games between 1984 and 1996. At the Seoul Games in 1988, she set a world record en route to the gold medal in the heptathlon, then won the long-jump competition. Four years later, she successfully defended her heptathlon title in Barcelona. As the world's dominant female athlete, Joyner-Kersee earned the Track and Field News Athlete of the Year award three times (1986, 1987, and 1994), and won the 1987 Sullivan Award. After the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, she briefly returned to basketball, playing for the Richmond Rage of the new American Basketball League.

Joyner-Kersee, who is married to former UCLA women's coach Bob Kersee (he's still a volunteer assistant), was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996.