What is Jackie Joyner-Kersee's Net Worth?
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is an American retired track & field athlete who has a net worth of $2.5 million. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the heptathlon and long jump and has won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals over those two events at four different Olympic Games. She is currently on the board of directors for USA Track & Field.
Joyner-Kersee was voted the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time by Sports Illustrated for Women.
Early Life
Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee was born on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, and named after Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady of the United States. She attended East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High School and qualified for the finals in the long jump at the 1980 Olympic Trials and finished eighth.
Jackie went on to UCLA where she starred in both track & field and women's basketball from 1980 to 1985 and graduated with a bachelor's in history in 1986. She won the Broderick Award (now Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate track & field competitor in 1983 and 1985 and was awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup in 1985. In basketball, she scored 1,167 points over her college career, good for 19th all-time for the Bruins. She helped the team advance to the West Regional semi-finals of the 1985 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament. Joyner-Kersee was voted the "Top Woman Collegiate Athlete of the Past 25 Years."
Career
Jackie Joyner-Kersee competed in the Summer Olympics in 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996. Joyner-Kersee won gold medals in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in heptathlon and in the 1988 Seoul Olympics in heptathlon and long jump. She won a silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in heptathlon and bronze medals in long jump at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She also won gold medals at the World Championships in 1987 for long jump and heptathlon and in 1991 for long jump and in 1993 for heptathlon, as well as at the Pan American Games for long jump in 1987.
As of October 2019, Joyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon and the top six all-time best results, and her long jump record of 7.49m is second all-time.
Joyner-Kersee briefly played for the American Basketball League in 1996 where she had little success and never scored more than 15 points in a game.
In March 2023, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
Philanthropy
Joyner-Kersee is an active philanthropist in children's education, women's rights, and racial equality. She founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation to encourage young people in the East St. Louis area to pursue athletics and academics. In 2011, Jackie partnered with Comcast to create the Internet Essentials program to provide high-speed internet access to low-income Americans.
Personal Life
Jackie married her track coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986. Her brother is Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner, who was married to Olympic track champion Florence Griffith Joyner.
Joyner-Kersee is one of the most popular athletes ever to have overcome severe asthma.
