‘MEN AND WOMEN NEED TO FIGHT TOGETHER FOR EQUALITY'

Track and field-great JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE on winning Olympic gold and her hopes for the next generation of female athletes

- JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, HAS always been home for me, it laid the foundation. Even though my family didn’t have all the things that we probably wanted as far as materialistic items, there was a lot of love in our home, a lot of motivation and a lot of push to be the best that we could be.

When I first started running at the age of 9, I wasn’t one of the best girls. In my first competition, I finished last. But what I loved about it was that it was fun. So I just said to myself: If I can improve a tenth of a second when running, or half of an inch if I was jumping, that meant the work that I was doing was paying off. Eventually, I started thinking that maybe one day I could get some hardware and be on a podium.

But it wasn’t until I was 14, when I saw the’76 Olympic Games on television, that I thought, “Maybe one day I can go there.” We didn’t often see female sports on television. The Olympics gave me that platform to see them and to really broaden my mind. So I went to my coaches, and they said I had potential, but I had to be willing to work hard. That was truly the beginning.

The Impact of Title IX

WE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE MAGNITUDE of what was about to happen when Title IX was signed into law in 1972. It probably wasn’t until around ’77. I was a sophomore, and we only had one gymnasium at my high school. The boys had the gymnasium at the peak times and girls had to come back in the evening after 6 p.m. to practice. My mother said no to that!

So the coaches went to the administrators and made sure they fully understood the Title IX law, and then we shared the gymnasium. I think of the importance of that, and the magnitude, because you would have probably lost a lot of young ladies from sport just because of that technicality.