A high school All-American in both basketball and track, Joyner went to UCLA on an athletic scholarship in 1980 and was a four-year starter in basketball. She also set a college records of 22-11½ in the long jump and 6,718 points in the pentathlon in 1985, when she won the Broderick Cup as the nation's outstanding female college athlete.

The NCAA pentathlon champion in 1982 and 1983, Joyner won the national championship in 1982 and set an American record of 6,520 points in the 1984 Olympic trials. She won a silver medal in the pentathlon in the Los Angeles Olympics, missing the gold by just 5 points, and she finished fifth in the long jump.

Joyner married her coach, Bob Kersee, early in 1986. That year she became the first American woman to hold the pentathlon world record by scoring 7,148 points at the Goodwill Games in Moscow. She extended the record to 7,158 points in the U. S. Olympic Sports Festival, where she won all seven events. Joyner-Kersee was presented with the Sullivan Award as the country's top amateur athlete of the year.

In 1987, Joyner-Kersee competed extensively in the high hurdles and long jump. She won five of eight hurdles races and eleven of twelve long jump competitions. At the national outdoor championships, she won the pentathlon and the long jump, and she tied the world long jump record of 24-5½ at the Pan-American Games.

Her season culminated at the world championships, where she again won both the pentathlon and the long jump, becoming the first woman ever to win an individual event and a multi-event in Olympic-level competition, and the first athlete to do it since Harold Osborne in 1924. She was named female athlete of the year by the Associated Press and amateur sportswoman of the year by the Women's Sports Foundation.

Joyner-Kersee won gold medals in the long jump and the heptathlon at the 1988 Olympics. She repeated in the heptathlon in 1992, when she won a bronze in the long jump. She was the first woman to win multi-event titles at two Olympics and the first athlete of either sex to win multi-event medals in three Olympics.

She was also the world long jump champion in 1991, when she had to drop out of the pentathlon competition because of an injury. However, she came back to win the world heptathlon championship in 1993.

At the 1996 Olympics, Joyner-Kersee had to pull out of the heptathlon competition again after she pulled a hamstring in the first event. After several days of intense rehabilitation, she won the bronze medal in the long jump, giving her six Olympic medals, more than any other American woman in track.

Shortly afterward, Joyner-Kersee signed to play for the Richmond Rage of the new American Basketball League. However, she left the team after 17 games to return to track and field.

Her last major victory came in the heptathlon at the 1998 Goodwill Games. Attempting to make her fifth Olympic team, Joyner-Kersee could place only sixth in the long jump at the trials in 2000. She announced her retirement from the sport in February of 2001.

source http://www.hickoksports.com/biograph/joyner-kerseej.shtml