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After her heptathlon and long jump victories at the1988 Olympic
Games, Jackie Joyner-Kersee took the next season relatively easy, not
competing in either of these two events, concentrating instead on the
100m and 400m hurdles events. She made a relaxed return to the
heptathlon in 1990, scoring 6701 points in April and 6783 points in July
at the Goodwill Games in Seattle. Both performances were well below
her 7291 points world record set in 1988, but her dominance of the event
was so great, that they constituted the world's best two performances
of 1990.
In 1991, she returned to her best in both the long jump and
heptathlon, winning both events at the US national championships in New
York. Later that year travelled to Tokyo for the 1991 World
Championships to defend the world titles she held in both of these
events. In the long jump on 23 August, she narrowly defeated her old
rival Heike Drechsler (Germany) by only 3 centimetres, but in the
process badly twisted her ankle. In the heptathlon the following day,
the ankle did not appear to be bothering her, and by three events she
led the field by 165 points and was only 11 points behind her world
record schedule. But during the next event, the 200m, she pulled up
with a hamstring injury, triggered by her twisted ankle the previous day
and had to withdraw from the competition. She recovered from that
injury to successfully defend her Olympic heptathlon title the following
year in Barcelona with a score of 7044 points. She was below her best
in the Olympic long jump final held on 7 August, finishing with the
bronze medal after a longest jump of 7.07m (see photo above), 3 centimetres shorter than the distance she had jumped during the heptathlon five days earlier. (Ron Casey)
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