A Kind of Grace

by Jackie Joyner-Kersee

  I was so affected by the experience, I decided to include an open forum for girls during the annual relay activities. Each year we gather the 600 to 700 female participants in the meet and encourage them to ask questions and discuss problems with me and the other elite athletes who join me on the weekend. I hope we're making a difference.

  25

  Adored and Ignored

  After the 1988 Olympics, I became everyone's favorite example of the cool reception women, blacks, and track and field athletes received from corporate America when seeking sponsors. I was an all-purpose victim. I was expected to be up in arms about it. But the stories assumed something that wasn't true—that I was dissatisfied with the number of endorsements I'd contracted to do or with my opportunities. As The Wall Street Journal correctly pointed out at the time, I was sponsored by Adidas, 7UP and asthma inhaler maker Primatene, and was doing quite well, thank you. At various times, I've also appeared in ads and commercials for Avon, Gap Stores, Procter & Gamble's Secret deodorant and Ray-Ban.

  The point I kept making to journalists and others who asked me about endorsements was that more isn't always better. My sponsors have given me a lot of flexibility in fulfilling my obligations so that I have time to train sufficiently. I know a lot of struggling athletes who're caught in a Catch-22 situation. They're so desperate for training funds that they wind up with burdensome sponsorship contracts requiring them to spend many days speaking and traveling, leaving little time for training.

  I particularly enjoy speaking on behalf of Nike's PLAY (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth) program, which has goals similar to those of my youth foundation. PLAY supports the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in its efforts to provide athletic, intellectual and social enrichment activities for young people.

  I signed on with Nike in 1992, after the Barcelona Games. I first visited the company in 1991 while I was in Oregon with Bobby for the NCAA Championships. Bobby decided on the spur of the moment to drive over to Beaverton to Nike's headquarters, known as “The Campus.” I was still under contract to Adidas at the time, but Gail was a Nike client and she had meetings scheduled with the designers about the moldings for her track shoes. While she was with them, Bobby and I strolled the campus walkways, looking at the plaques that honored great athletes. I was self-conscious about being decked out in Adidas stripes from head to toe—sweatpants, shoes, T-shirt and jacket. Had I known we were going to Nike, I would have worn something different. I apologized to one of the company officials, who was very understanding.

  We were in the cafeteria having lunch when Nike's chairman, Phil Knight, of all people, walked up to our table and introduced himself. It was so thrilling. Then I remembered what I was wearing. “Oh, my God, this is like a slap in the face to this man!” I thought.

  He's the head of the company. We're at the corporate headquarters. And I'm covered in the logo of his chief competitor. But if it bothered him, he showed no sign. He was very warm, and as we talked, I saw a sparkle in his eye that excited me. Here was one of the most powerful men in business and in sports, taking the time to acknowledge me—a female athlete. It meant a lot—made me feel good about him and his company. Bobby didn't approach Nike about sponsoring me for several more months, after my contract with Adidas expired. But, in my mind, that meeting was the real start of my relationship with the company. After that, every time I went to the Beaverton campus, Phil took the time to chat.

  Despite my good fortune with sponsorships, I'm not blind to the narrow thinking of many on Madison Avenue and in corporate boardrooms. Companies can come up with all sorts of excuses not to use you to promote their products. If you don't fit into the mold they've already come up with, you won't get the job. And no amount of ranting and raving and complaining will change it. That's why I've always taken the view that as long as I know I've done my best on the athletic field, I've done my job. If endorsements come my way because of it, fine. But if not, it just wasn't meant to be. It doesn't do any good to bad-mouth organizations or people because of it. It's not something I can control, so I don't waste a lot of energy worrying about it.

  The combination of my philanthropic work, personal appearances and disillusionment kept me off the track for much of 1989. I needed a break from the rigorous training and the endless sniping and cynicism.

  I ran in a few sprint-hurdle contests during the indoor season, but continued to speak before civic and corporate groups and to visit hospitals and schools. Bobby fretted about my schedule, constantly telling me I was overdoing it. But I stubbornly plowed ahead. I enjoyed meeting people and having them greet me like an old friend. In airports or at restaurants, total strangers would walk up with big smiles on their faces and say, “Hi, Jackie!” Some gave me hugs and told me how proud they were. Others asked for an autograph or just wanted to talk.

  I also judged the Miss USA Pageant, which I loved. I was a huge beauty pageant fan as a youngster and I still am. I never pass up an invitation to judge one, unless it conflicts with a prior commitment. I've also judged two Miss America pageants, the last one in September 1996. Some people criticize pageants. But they're very serious business for the contestants and the organizers and I always earnestly evaluate each young woman according to the established criteria. Sitting in the front row of the auditorium, decked out in an evening gown, makeup and jewelry, is also a lot of fun. I used to fantasize about doing such things when I was growing up. It's a great escape from the pressures of track and field.

  As much as I enjoyed the limelight and charity work, however, it began to take a toll. I was constantly exhausted, dragging myself from hotel to airport and back again. In spring, I divided my time between the track and my personal appearances. The training, coupled with the strain of traveling, slowly wore me down. I lost almost twenty pounds and was physically and mentally spent.

  Then I contracted a cold that hit me hard. I felt faint and weak in practice. I had no energy at all. One morning, I was so tired I couldn't get out of bed. Bobby took me to the doctor, who said I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I argued with him, telling him he was exaggerating. But he insisted on keeping me in the hospital for two days. On the third day, he walked into my room and said, “I'll release you on one condition—that you take a vacation.”

  Bobby and I packed our suitcases and flew to Maui for a week. It was the honeymoon we'd never had. I went shopping while Bobby went sightseeing and spent hours on the beach. He was itching to go snorkeling, but I begged him not to. I was terrified that he'd have an accident underwater. He agreed to stay on land with me. It was kind of schmaltzy, but we couldn't leave Hawaii without seeing Don Ho perform and hearing him sing “Tiny Bubbles.”

  I was back on the road by the early part of 1990 however. That year was only slightly less taxing than the previous one had been. At the end of the year, Bobby sat down and calculated that I'd been away from home 284 nights. In one ten-day period that year, I went from Los Angeles to Phoenix, to St. Louis, to New York, then back to Los Angeles, according to his records. “That's still way too much, Jackie,” he said. “You've got to cut back or you'll wear yourself down again.”

  In addition to cutting back, I needed help handling the bags of fan mail coming in every week and responding to the stack of requests for appearances. People gave me presents, schoolchildren wrote me poems and sent photographs and posters to be autographed. Civic groups wanted to honor me or have me address their organizations. The crush of attention eventually overwhelmed us.

  My aunt Della was traveling with me at the time and trying to help out. But the travel and the workload were too much for her alone. She tells a story about the morning we left New York, stopped in Indianapolis for a drug test and then went to New Orleans. Three states in one day. We both woke up the next morning not quite sure where we were. Della was married, had a young son and wanted to spend more time at home. Soon after that whirlwind trip, she gave up the job as my assistant and became the bookkeeper and office manager at JJK & Associates.

/>   Greg Foster's sister Valarie, who has boundless energy and an unfailingly cheery disposition, took over for Della as my assistant. Though I've tried to cut back on speeches and appearances, the volume of invitations and requests for pictures and autographs has continued to grow, particularly before and after Olympic Games.

  I'm still amazed by the reception I get and some of the places I'm recognized. Val Foster and I were riding on the interstate in Richmond, Virginia, in 1996 when we kept hearing a truck horn. I looked over at the next lane and saw a huge Brink's truck. The uniformed driver and his colleague in the passenger seat started waving furiously at me. Reading their lips, I could tell they were saying, “It's Jackie! It's Jackie!” I smiled, waved back and said “Hi!”

  A few years ago an employee from Wal-Mart came running after me in the parking lot after I left the store. She was out of breath by the time she reached me. I thought something was wrong. “I couldn't see you, but I heard your voice and I knew it was you,” she said while trying to regain her breath. “I just had to get your autograph.” When I think back to those incidents it makes me laugh. But it also touches me.

  The outside activities took my mind off track temporarily, but my attitude didn't really improve. When I returned to competition in 1990, I tried to let things roll off my back and to remain upbeat. But my skin was tissue-paper thin.

  I know that some wonderful things have been written about me over the years. And I appreciate all the kind journalistic words. But that didn't stop me from feeling that, by and large, my accomplishments were given short shrift, taken for granted or overlooked altogether. Maybe I was overly sensitive, but in my opinion, many sportswriters were overly insensitive to my accomplishments. Once I surpassed the 7,000-point milestone, anything less by me wasn't good enough for them. It was as if the bar was higher for me than it was for other athletes.

  I'd played by the rules. I'd become the best. I expected to be acknowledged, if not appreciated. But there was always some reason I wasn't. First, the excuse was that I hadn't competed enough internationally. Then, once I'd dominated the international field, set world records and won the Olympic gold medals, I became a bore. Bobby helped fan the flames of expectations by always talking about reaching the 7,300 plateau. He actually told one reporter, “The 6,700 or 6,800 she could win it with isn't our style.”

  I knew Bobby was trying to motivate me. And, believe me, I wanted to see myself score 7,300 points as badly as he did. But statements like that did more harm than good because when I didn't meet those expectations, it gave the media a reason to criticize.

  Dating back to the 1984 Olympics, I'd won every heptathlon I entered and finished. Yet, if I didn't score at least 7,000 points in a competition, I was treated like a failure. A story published just before the 1991 U.S. Championships was typical of the kind of press I was getting. It suggested I hadn't done anything worthwhile since the 1988 Olympics. Furthermore, the writer said, there wasn't any reason to expect that I ever would. The article referred to me in the past tense, using phrases like “the indomitable force she once was.” The article belittled my efforts in the long jump and hurdles. Although I was ranked third in the U.S. in the 400-meter hurdles and eighth in the 100-meter hurdles at the end of 1989, and had followed that in 1990 by finishing first in the world in the heptathlon, first in the U.S. and seventh in the world in the long jump, and fourth nationally in the 100-meter hurdles, the writer remained unimpressed. The article contended that “in no event was she especially imposing.” The writer was also bored by the 6,783 points I scored at the Goodwill Games in Seattle to win by more than 500 points. But, if all of that wasn't especially imposing, I don't know what is.

  Nothing irks me more than being underestimated and taken for granted. But I was too disgusted to fight back. For the first time in my career, I wasn't motivated. I was just sick and tired of it all. After the first day's events at the 1991 U.S. Championships, I was on pace to score 7,000 points. That night, Bobby tried to pump me up to do it, calculating the numbers I needed in the remaining three events. I looked at him with disdain and asked, “Why should I do it? Someone will just find a reason to criticize.”

  When I was younger, I competed in track and showed up at practice every day because I knew if I worked hard I'd be the best. Being the best meant I had become a success at something and had accomplished something important.

  As I got older and the competition intensified, so did my need to excel. The challenge of being the best in the world, of breaking records, of winning Olympic gold medals energized and motivated me. I was like a musician on the track. Every dash down the runway toward the sand pit, every stride around the track, every heave of the javelin and shot, every jump over the high bar, and every step over the hurdles was an expression of that urge inside me to be a virtuoso.

  Coach Fennoy and my mother told me I could look forward to some wonderful fringe benefits of excellence—chiefly, prosperity, and a feeling of accomplishment and self-fulfillment. They were right about the prosperity and the sense of accomplishment. I was financially secure and had proven that a poor black girl from East St. Louis could rise above meager circumstances to become the very best at something.

  But I still didn't feel fulfilled. As gratifying as the trophies and gold medals were, they didn't satisfy my deeper hunger. It may sound shallow, but I wanted people to appreciate and acknowledge the real extent of my accomplishments. I think it's a very basic, very human desire.

  For me, after the world records were set and the gold medals won, the ultimate prize became acceptance and approval. I had to wait until 1984 to get it from my home town. In 1991, I was still trying to find it within my sport. The frustrations I felt were making me bitter and self-pitying.

  As I struggled to cope with the situation, I tried to imagine what my mother would want me to do. She wouldn't have wanted me to lash out at anyone or walk around with a bad attitude. She'd expect me to handle the situation with good cheer. “Today might look gloomy,” she would have said, “but tomorrow will be bright.” At my lowest moments, I've tried to remember that and keep the faith.

  By the time the World Championships rolled around in the late summer of 1991 I was in better spirits. In fact, I drew strength from the experiences of 1988 and used them as motivation. Even if people slandered me and denigrated my accomplishments, I would just continue competing and trying to excel.

  26

  Asthma and Other Annoyances

  My new attitude couldn't keep heartbreak, adversity and controversy away. But it did give me the strength to overcome them.

  Twice in the span of eight days in January 1991, I opened my front door to find an overnight delivery envelope from The Athletic Congress (TAC), the track and field governing body. Each time, the envelope contained a letter telling me I had forty-eight hours to report for random drug testing unless I had a compelling excuse. Notices for a third and a fourth test arrived a few days later, forty-eight hours apart. The overnight delivery person visited my house once more in February with another TAC testing notice. In all, I was called for random testing five times in five weeks, on January 10, 18, 22, 24 and on February 14.

  It was hard to believe my name came up that many times in that short a span during what was supposed to be a random selection process. I suspected I was the target of a witch hunt—that someone at TAC suspected me of doing something wrong and was determined to catch me red-handed. I didn't want to believe our own governing body could be that malicious, but what else was I to think after so many tests in so short a time?

  Bobby had ruffled a lot of feathers and inspired jealousy over the years in the track and field community. He was a black man who'd been very successful as a coach of black athletes, training as many, if not more, Olympic track and field medalists in 1984 and 1988 than any other coach in the country, and I think some other coaches were envious and suspicious of his success.

  Also, TAC prohibited personal coaches of American athletes from standing on the field during i
nternational meets and consulting with their athletes. TAC only wanted national team coaches, such as Brooks Johnson in 1984, on the field. Bobby had lots of athletes competing in those meets and he thought it was absurd that, while individual coaches from East Germany were down there with their athletes in addition to the national team coaches, he had to either buy a ticket to the meet and sit in the stadium or settle for a limited-access pass and linger near the track entrance behind a fence. Often, he'd just bolt past the security officers, walk onto the field and stay there all day. I thought he had a valid point. Nevertheless, I always worried that Bobby's defiance would get me disqualified from a meet. When the notices started piling up, I wondered if this also might be the governing body's way of harassing Bobby.

  There were other circumstances that made us think there was a hidden agenda. Through the track grapevine, we learned that almost none of the other heptathletes and long jumpers had been tested during the same period—an indication that I was being singled out. Also, a TAC official snidely remarked to Bobby that I “shouldn't be so good in all those events,” implying that I'd invited the scrutiny by excelling. I'm happy that track and field has drug testing. Ordinarily, I don't mind taking the tests, because I have nothing to hide. I just didn't appreciate being singled out or punished for doing my job well.

  The bigger frustration for me was how little faith there was in test results among journalists, athletes and coaches. No matter how many tests I took and passed, doubts persisted. When allegations were made about me at the 1988 Games, it didn't seem to matter that I'd never failed a drug test. People were eager to speculate about my taking steroids, insisting that the test isn't foolproof, that it can be beaten by ingesting other drugs that mask the presence of steroids in the urine. I've never understood that logic. If no one had ever been caught by the testing officials, the skepticism would be understandable. But if the sport is conducting tests and athletes are being snared, that should prove that the testing procedures were effective in uncovering problems. Conversely, the fact that under the same rules and procedures I'd never failed a test should also prove something. It still perplexes and frustrates me.