A Kind of Grace

by Jackie Joyner-Kersee

  I was expressing my true feelings, but I wanted to protect myself in case the feelings weren't returned. So my affection for him remained a secret, even to my closest friends. After my two experiences with the opposite sex, in high school and college, I felt like a real loser when it came to relationships. I had told myself, “Oh well, it's not meant to be. You just can't win in that arena.”

  During a track team trip to Taiwan in 1982, I watched Bobby flirting with the Chinese woman serving as our interpreter. She was flirting back, giggling and calling him pet names in Chinese. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was jealous. But I was dating my boyfriend at the time. I just wanted to have some fun at Bobby's expense. During an afternoon shopping trip through one of the outdoor markets, I sidled up to the interpreter and told her to watch her step because Bobby was my husband. The woman was so angry and humiliated, she walked over to him, chewed him out and stormed off. Bobby stood there flabbergasted, in the middle of the street, surrounded by screaming peddlers and grasping tourists. Jeanette and I were over in the corner, watching the scene and cracking up. The next day, Jeanette told him what I'd done. He was so mad at me, I thought he'd strangle me. Stunts like that were the reason no one took me seriously when it came to Bobby.

  I really did think he was cute. When I looked at him I saw a man who possessed the ideal qualities. I respected his judgment and his advice. He brought out the best in me as an athlete and as a person. I knew I could rely on him and confide in him about anything. All of those attributes made him really attractive to me.

  I sensed that Bobby's feelings might be changing toward me, too. In addition to the trips to the movies, he started buying me presents. He bought me clothes because he said I wore too much polyester. One spring night in 1985, he picked me up in his car and drove to the beach. He wanted to sit on the sand and watch the water. He said it relaxed him. I had no idea what was coming next. I wondered if he wanted to talk about starting a romantic relationship. He seemed tense. He said he had a lot on his mind.

  I always knew instinctively when Bobby wanted me to talk or to just be an ear for him. So I sat silently and listened. He'd become head track coach earlier that season, after returning from a year's sabbatical to help us all train for the Olympic Games. He wanted to do well in the job. He talked about the women's track team and its chances at the NCAA Championships. He wanted me to play a game with him and predict the final team scores at the Championships. I couldn't believe it. We had the beach, moonlight and stars and he wanted to talk about track!

  Finally, he asked me if I felt like he'd become more than a coach to me. This was what I'd been waiting and hoping for. But, I hesitated before answering. Still guarded, I hedged and said something evasive like, “Yes, kind of.”

  I told him I didn't know if that was off-limits or not, because he was still my coach. “I don't know how to explain what I'm feeling,” I said.

  He looked at me and smiled. “That's okay. I have deeper feelings for you, too.”

  We left it at that until the end of the spring term. In the meantime, we continued to work together and go to movies alone and in groups. It was all very casual, though. Nothing romantic.

  Bobby and I were so guarded and cagey about our feelings, it's a wonder we ever got together. But when we finally let down our guard with each other, it was like the Berlin Wall being demolished. The chain reactions occurred with dizzying speed. The turning point came later that summer. I was preparing to fly home to finally take possession of my Mustang and drive it back to Los Angeles, where I'd decided to live and train for the next Olympics. Bobby offered to meet me in St. Louis and drive back with me.

  During the drive we got to know each other on an even deeper level. We talked about a thousand things. Our families, the future, our values. Bobby told me about how his mother had helped to shape his personality and his values. She'd raised him to be an independent person. That's why he didn't open up to a lot of people. But he was very relaxed and happy during that long trip. I could tell he was enjoying himself. He also talked about what he was looking for in a wife. It was eye-opening. But I didn't hear anything that troubled me. I was having a ball. We drove past the horse farms in Kentucky and stopped in Knoxville to take in the UCLA-Tennessee football game and spend the night.

  We also stopped in Houston, where he made a recruiting call on Carlette Guidry, one of the country's best high school sprinters who wound up going to the University of Texas. Bobby is fascinated with sports arenas. So, before taking off for L.A., he wanted to see a game in the Astrodome. It just so happened that the Dodgers were in town and the night's pitching matchup was Fernando Valenzuela against Nolan Ryan. Bobby was in seventh heaven.

  Midway through the game, in between Nolan Ryan fastballs and bites of his hot dog, he announced that he'd found someone he wanted to marry. My heart sank. He wanted to know what I thought about the idea. I forced a smile to hide my disappointment and said, “Oh, I think you'll be a good husband for someone.”

  He laughed and looked at me with astonishment. “You don't understand, Jackie. I want to marry you.”

  I was so relieved and thrilled! Not until I heard the words from his mouth did I know for sure how he felt. Bobby wasn't one to pour out his heart. So when he did open up, I knew he meant every word. Although he hadn't romanced me, or conducted anything resembling a normal courtship, we'd known each other for four years. We'd seen each other at our best and at our worst. I knew I loved him. When he proposed to me in that awkward, roundabout way and told me he loved me, I knew he was serious about making a commitment.

  “Oh! Okay, yeah!” I said, the words stumbling out of my mouth just as awkwardly. “I'd like to marry you, too!”

  And so we were engaged. I was ecstatic. I ran to the concourse to find a pay phone to call my aunt Della with the news.

  20

  Mr. and Mrs.

  The morning we were to be married, Bobby was in the bathtub when his cell phone rang. He picked it up and heard Bill Cosby's voice.

  “Hey, Bob, you gonna do this thing? This is your last chance to back out!”

  “Yeah, Bill, I'm gonna go through with it.”

  “Do you need any advice? Where's Jackie?”

  “She's at her place getting ready.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess it would be bad luck to see her. Well, what are you doing? It's almost time.”

  “I'm in the tub, Bill.”

  “Well, get your naked self out of the tub and get over to the church. Put on your clothes first, though!”

  “Okay, Bill.”

  “Camille and I will send something. We wish you and Jackie all the best, Bob.”

  “Thanks, Bill.”

  After one trip to a department store with Jeanette and seeing the paperwork involved in joining the bridal registry, and the $900-plus price tags on the wedding gowns, I abandoned plans for a big wedding.

  Our ceremony was a simple, sweet affair at the church Bobby and I attended, St. Luke's Baptist in Long Beach. January 11, 1986, was a sun-drenched, picture-postcard-pretty Southern California day. I wore a white lace dress and the veil from my Easter hat. Al gave me away, then picked up his camera and served as wedding photographer. Val was my matron of honor. Bobby's best friend, Dave Harris, was his best man. Bobby's family and all of our friends from track and field and basketball attended. Al was the only member of my family who attended. I told my family back in East St. Louis not to worry about coming. It would have been an expensive trip.

  Instead of a honeymoon, Bobby and I flew to New Orleans, where I received the 1985 Broderick Cup, which is awarded to the nation's best female collegiate athlete. It was one of my favorite wedding gifts. At the dinner, I was so sure Cheryl Miller would win that I actually thought I heard her name when mine was called. I felt so honored to have been selected. Elizabeth Dole, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation at the time, was the dinner speaker and presented the award to me. We had a nice chat afterward. I thought then, as I do now, that she's a very classy lady. So
smart and so accomplished.

  Being Bobby's wife as well as his athlete was a difficult role adjustment for me. In my private life, I wasn't accustomed to somebody telling me what to do. After my mother died, I'd been on my own, in control, taking orders from no one. Now suddenly, Bobby was carrying over our relationship from the track and telling me what to do all the time. I resisted it. And my rebelliousness even spilled back into the athletic arena. I mouthed off about every tersely worded order he gave. Before we were married, they didn't bother me. But now that I was his wife, I didn't think he should talk to me that way.

  Meanwhile, Bobby was having similar problems adapting to the dual role of coach and husband. It took him a long time to realize that I wasn't still the nineteen-year-old he'd grown used to ordering around on the track. When I was young I accepted whatever he said without question. But as I matured, I became more opinionated. While I accepted the fact that on the track he was the boss, I nevertheless wanted to discuss the reasoning behind those decisions so that I understood why I was doing things a certain way and to make sure we'd considered all options. Before our marriage, he'd voluntarily explained why. Now, every time I asked why, he called me hardheaded and viewed it as a challenge to his authority. “Don't ask me why,” he'd snap. “Just do it.”

  I reminded him that we both were adults and that he didn't have to yell at me to get the point across, that it was humiliating when he did it in public. He's come a long way in that department. But occasionally, in the heat of the moment, he forgets.

  He's taken a lot of flak for some of the things he's said to me while television cameras were rolling and reporters were taking notes. People have accused him of everything from exploitation to wife abuse. A woman approached us in the airport after the 1991 World Championships, where I'd twisted my ankle during the long jump and Bobby told Bob Forster, “If it's not broken, tape it. She's taking her last jump.”

  She and many other people saw that and were outraged. Bobby received dozens of angry letters. Anyway, this woman who approached us congratulated me. Then she looked at Bobby and said, “I know what those initials B.K. stand for: Bobby Knight. You're the Bobby Knight of track and field. I don't like him and I don't like you.”

  I was stunned. Bobby took it in stride. He said to me afterward, “When Phil Jackson sends Michael Jordan back into an NBA Finals game with a sprained ankle it's a gutsy move by the coach and a display of Jordan's heart. When I do that with you, because you're a woman and my wife, I'm an abusive husband and you're a victim.”

  I agree with Bobby. That woman and the others who say such things aren't giving me much credit. They assume that I'm some kind of doormat who would let a man exploit me without standing up for myself. Believe me, that's not my personality.

  In Tokyo in 1991, once Bobby determined that the ankle wasn't broken or seriously sprained, he didn't want me to start doubting myself or become tentative, the way I did after the hamstring injury during the 1984 Olympics. Suffering an injury is like falling off a horse. You have to get right back on or you'll be afraid for the rest of your life.

  Also, not all the yelling is negative. When I'm in competition, I want to hear Bobby's voice shouting out technical instructions, split times and firing me up. Usually, he's saying things like, “You're not going home with me unless you give me a 7 [-meter-long jump]!” Or, “You're not on target, pick it up!” during the 800. Or, “It's about time you woke your ass up!” if he thinks I'm not performing my best.

  One of our worst days together occurred after we'd been married for about a year and a half. We were working at the high-jump area at Drake Stadium at UCLA. Bobby was talking to Daley Thompson, the 1980 and 1984 Olympic decathlon gold medalist, and a couple of other athletes while I tried to master the flop technique and break my habit of crossing the high bar in the sitting position. I've had a phobia about laying my head and arms back and allowing myself to fall backward since high school. Early on, I tried it that way, missed the mat and fell on the ground on my tailbone. Bobby wanted me to practice flopping off a trampoline and I refused to do it because I was afraid.

  “Damn it, I'm the coach out here,” he screamed in front of Daley and the others. “Do it my way or leave the track.” I marched off. I was never so embarrassed and angry in my life.

  After a few minutes Daley came over and consoled me in that beautiful British accent of his. “Jackie, you're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days,” he said. “It's okay to leave, but remember that Bobby wouldn't do anything to hurt you. He's trying to help you. He's in your corner.”

  I appreciated Daley's comments. Bobby and I had to find a way to peacefully resolve our differences and maintain both our marriage and our on-track partnership. Later, we both agreed we loved each other and we couldn't allow track and field to interfere with the personal side of our relationship.

  We designated the office next to our garage as the mad room. It's the place where we aired our feelings about the day's events on the track and where we left the coach-athlete relationship. Once we stepped out of the mad room into the house, everything about track was forgotten and we were husband and wife again. The arrangement worked.

  Bobby loves to tell people he's the boss at home, that if we are deadlocked over an issue he has the tie-breaking vote. I always laugh when I hear that or read it in an article, because that's not the way it is at all. We each have equal input, 50-50, and that's the basis upon which decisions are made, not 49-49, with Bobby holding the last 2 percent like some kind of trump card, the way he's always saying. I know it makes him feel good to think that. If he wants to say it, he'll have to put it in his book, because that isn't how it is in my book. Or in our house.

  People have also accused him of sponging off my success to advance his career. The fact is, he was already gainfully employed as a coach at UCLA and was developing a group of potential world-class athletes when I got there. I joined his group.

  The other thing people don't know about Bobby is that he's never collected a coaching fee from any of the athletes who've worked with him, no matter how long he's coached them or how successful they've become. Neither Al, nor Florence, nor Gail Devers, nor Jeanette Bolden, nor Val Brisco, nor Greg Foster has ever paid Bobby a dime for coaching help. After the 1984 Olympics, while he was head track coach at UCLA, he formed the World Class Track Club, with sponsorship money from Adidas. The club's pool of money covered training and traveling expenses for the team members who were out of school. They included Al, Florence, Jeanette, Val, Greg and me.

  In 1986, Imperial Chemical Industries, ICI, came on board as a track club sponsor. The two companies continued to sponsor the club for several years. During that time, we all wore Adidas warmup suits and uniforms and T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with the ICI logo. Bobby also started a management firm, World Class Management, and negotiated sponsorships and endorsement deals for members of the track club. After I graduated, he negotiated my shoe and apparel deal with Adidas, which also paid me a monthly stipend for living expenses. He acted as Gail Devers's agent in negotiations for her sponsorship contract with Nike when she finished at UCLA. As a coach, he did not allow any of his athletes to be charged more than a 10 percent commission fee, which I think was reasonable. He continues to have the same arrangement with Gail, who's a client of JJK & Associates, the sports marketing and management firm we formed after folding World Class Management several years ago.

  Bobby's interests extend far beyond the weight room and the track. He resigned as head coach at UCLA in 1993, not only to work full-time with track athletes such as Gail and me, but to train competitors in several sports besides track, including professional tennis players Zina Garrison and Monica Seles, and hockey goalie Grant Fuhr. Impressed by his results with Grant, then–St. Louis Blues coach Mike Keenan hired Bobby to be the team's strength and conditioning coach in 1996.

  Sometimes, I think that deep down Bobby's a good ol' boy. His favorite pastimes, other than attending hockey games an
d listening to George Strait and Reba McEntire songs, are going line dancing with his cowboy boots on, watching stock car races and hanging out with Jeff Gordon, Bill Elliott and the other drivers he knows on the NASCAR circuit.

  Despite what others may think, I know that Bobby always has my best interests at heart. I think I'm the most important person in the world to him. He wants me to be happy and will do whatever it takes to ensure it.

  21

  World's Best

  One of the reasons I love competing in track and field is that the results are determined by objective standards. No points added or deducted for style. Run the fastest, throw the farthest, leap the highest and you win.

  But track and field does have its subjective moments. They come at the end of the season when Track & Field News hands out its rankings and awards. By the end of 1985, I was ranked third in the world in the heptathlon by the magazine, even though I posted the top score among all competitors worldwide, 6,718 points. That performance came at the National Sports Festival. The reason offered by the editors for my placement: I hadn't compiled those scores during a major international competition. In their eyes, I couldn't claim the number one spot until I did it against the world's best, namely the East Europeans.

  It perturbed me. In the heptathlon, unlike other track and field events, points and results are awarded based on how an athlete fares in comparison to an objective standard, rather than on the athlete's performance relative to the rest of the field. I don't see why it should matter who else was at the meets I entered. The way I saw it, my 6,718 should be compared to the best scores of the other top heptathletes: Sabine Paetz, Sibylle Thiele and Ines Schulz of East Germany, and Natalya Shubenkova, Marianna Maslennikova and Larisa Nikitina of the Soviet Union. The athlete with the highest score in a given year is the best that year. Simple, straightforward and objective. But that's not the way it goes.

  As time went on and I gained more experience, I became increasingly cynical about the media's assessments of my performances. But in 1985, I was new to international competition and accepted the magazine's decision. The following year, 1986, I tried to play by their rules and give them what they wanted. I headed to Europe to face those women and other foreign competitors in the heptathlon. At the time, the world record stood at 6,946 points, scored by Sabine Paetz in 1984. My goal was to be the first woman to score 7,000 points in the event.