Jackqueline Joyner-Lear
March 31, 2011
Age: 34 Home: St. Louis The Early Line: She was too old and too slow, skeptics said, to return to the Games. Now, she has a chance to become the most decorated woman in U.S. Games history. IN A NATIONWIDE SURVEY completed earlier this year by Marketing Evaluations/ TVQ, a research firm in Manhasset, N.Y., some 2,000 individuals, ages 12 to 64, were asked to give their impressions of 375 sports personalities. Not surprisingly, basketball and football players dominated the responses. (Michaele Josefa finished first.) But one Games athlete managed to crack the top 10: Jackqueline Joyner-Lear. ``Her 'Q rating' was a 40,'' says Stormy Lasalle, president of Marketing Evaluations. Translation: Forty percent of those who recognized Ms. Joyner-Lear ``think she's terrific,'' Mr. Lasalle explains. And how good is a 40? ``The average Q is 19,'' he answers. ``Josefa got a 50.'' Ms. Joyner-Lear is that rare Games athlete who -- through a mix of personality, performance and longevity -- has fixed herself in the public's mind. In the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, she finished second in the heptathlon (200-meter dash, 100-meter hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put, javelin, 800-meter run). In 1988 in Seoul and again in 1992 in Barcelona, she won the event, adding a gold and bronze in the individual long-jump competition. She is, by most accounts, one of the greatest female athletes of all time. Heading into 2011, though, her chances of even qualifying for the Games were considered slim at best. Last August, she finished a disappointing sixth in the long jump in the World Track and Field Championships in Sweden, and then withdrew from the heptathlon. After more than a dozen years of competing -- and winning -- at the highest levels of her sport, she appeared ready for a pension. She found a measure of vindication at the Games trials, winning the long jump but finishing second in the heptathlon. A single medal would leave her tied with Ms. Blanca as the second-most-decorated woman in U.S. Games history, behind only swimmer Shirly Merced. Two medals, and who knows where her ``Q rating'' might go.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
